


The Seventh Prince of Hell

by eag



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Ancient History, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Asmodeus (Good Omens) - Freeform, Aziraphale is the Lord of the Octopuses, Beelzebub (Good Omens) - Freeform, Crowley does not have a sword, Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Falling In Love, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Love, M/M, Other, Role Reversal, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, graphic heterodoxy and heresy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 40,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24007366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eag/pseuds/eag
Summary: Aziraphale is the Seventh Prince of Hell, assigned through devious means to thwart the doings of Heaven.  Crowley is an ordinary angel who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Together they have adventures!Updates weekly.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 347
Kudos: 110





	1. The Temptation

**Genesis 3:(-7)-5.5**

-7 And they assembled all the Lords, the Princes of Hell into a congregation together sometime after the seventh day, but not on a day of rest because even the Dark Council has a day off. 

-6 When it came to pass that all grew weary of the powerful pointing presentations, Lord Beelzebub spake with a loud voice, saying unto them, One of uzz brotherzz muzzt go to Earth as Hell’s Represzentative and thwart the doings of Heaven; there izz no choice now that the Almighty has created humanzz. Who amongzt uzz shall take up the project? It comezz with a great deal of extra paperwork, much travel, and no overtime pay. And we shall not reimbursze anything and there shall be no per diem. 

-5 From among the Princes of Hell, one stood and said unto the First Prince of Hell, I would like to know exactly why we’re being called to do this. As members of the Dark Council, shouldn’t we just send an ordinary demon instead? Or even a Duke at the very most? After all, there is plenty work in Hell for us without needing to send someone so high-ranked to do something so menial.

-4 It izz to our benefit to take this very seriouszly, Lord Aziraphale, saith Lord Beelzebub unto him. We who loszt the war; we shall not lose Earth az well. Now I will volunteer three Lords of Hell. Step forward when I say your name.

-3 And of the seven Princes of Hell, three stepped forward, and only three; not two nor five, which are the other prime numbers near three and definitely not one, which is not a prime at all but the unit. The first was the Second Prince, who is called Asmodeus and is a demon of lust. The second was the Seventh Prince, who is called Aziraphale and is a demon of collecting stuff. And the third was the Fourth Prince, who is not worth talking about because they only appear in this one scene and for no other reason than to have three characters. I think that Prince is the demon of executive dysfunction or erectile dysfunction or something like that. Maybe both.

-2 And the three Princes, all Lords of Hell and members of the Dark Council, vied for the honors of being Representative on Earth with great reluctance until one of them won. Or lost, depending on how you look at it.

-1 And having won the dubious honors of being Representative on Earth, the Prince of Hell was told by Beelzebub to get up there and make some trouble, whatever that meant.

0 Later that very day on Earth the waters that flowed through Eden burbled, and flames erupted underwater though that would be impossible as flames could not erupt from underwater, except possibly in the case of a volcano or a deep sea trench, but that was not the case in Eden which had neither. However, from this supernatural burbling came a dark creature that slithered onto land, inching itself up out of the waters, over the field, and up an apple tree.

1 Now the octopus was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made, primarily because it was a beast of the sea and not the field. And not properly a beast, but more like a fish, especially since it came out of the waters. Except it wasn’t a fish. And he said unto the woman, So I hear that you were told by God that you could eat anything in the Garden of Eden. Did God say unto you, that you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the octopus, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the Garden.

3 But of the fruit of the tree that you’re clinging to, octopus, peering out at me from a shaded hollow in the trunk, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 Was that really God who said that or just one of God’s servants? Because if you heard it from an Archangel named, I don’t know, Gabriel or Michael or Sandalphon or Uriel, you probably shouldn’t listen to them, because they’re all a pack of lying bastards, every last one of them. However, you can trust me. I’m an octopus.

5 And the octopus said unto the woman, You shall not surely die. Besides, God said everything, right? The set of everything is defined as all things in the set. Here we have that the set is all the fruiting trees of Eden. If God didn’t want you to eat from this tree, God would have said, Ye may eat of the fruit of some of the trees of the Garden, but clearly God said every tree. That’s just how formal logic works, you know.

5.5 In fact, not only are these fruits good in a pie, they will also give you knowledge. You will know from good and evil after just one bite. I can’t imagine that God would find that troublesome, could She? After all, you’ll be more like Her, closer to Her, once you can tell the difference between good and evil. Besides, among other things, tasting of the fruit will give you the knowledge of baking a pie...


	2. The First Meeting

A cold damp wind blew over the Eastern Gate of Eden, thunder rumbling in the distance, and the Cherubim who had stood guard stepped away, flying down into the Garden, leaving only an ordinary angel to keep an eye on things while the more important angel went to kick some humans out of Eden.

Dark copper hair gleamed in the sunlight as the angel looked out over the wall, down at the vast desert below, brilliant white wings tilted in counterbalance as the angel peered over the edge.

The angel didn’t initially notice that from behind him came the slithering and squirming of tentacles as a creature made it up and over the mighty wall, suckers propelling the great mass of the beast forward. But the angel did notice once it was upon the wall and the octopus’ skin flexed through a multitude of shimmering colors as it stood on a pair of legs, becoming an angel. A fallen angel, with striking pale hair in sharp contrast to the black feathered wings that unfurled behind him.

“Wait, aren’t you…?” Intimidated, the angel backed up as the Fallen strode forward in in his black robes lined with dark blue, the gleaming silver embroidery of the border reflecting all the colors of Creation. Upon his head he wore a twisted crown of black meteoric iron, in the shape of tangled tentacles. 

The angel stared at the Fallen’s robe; it was the blue of the deep sea or perhaps the blue of the deep heavens, and something about that sent a shiver through the new corporeal form that the angel had been melded into.

“A Prince of Hell?” The Fallen looked amused. As he spoke his skin slowly pulsed through a multitude of colors; amber, obsidian, copper... “Yes, of course. Aziraphale, Seventh Prince of Hell. Lord of the Octopuses, Member of the Dark Council. A Lord of Hell. And you are?” With each word, Aziraphale slowly strode forward, his blue eyes fixed on the angel who retreated at the demon’s advance.

“Oh damn, a Prince of Hell. This wasn’t in the training.” The angel’s hands clapped over a rebellious mouth. 

Aziraphale’s lips moved into a broad smile as he chuckled. “That’s what I am. Tell me, who are you?”

“Crowley. An angel. A Servant of the Lord God. Angel of the Ninth Choir of the Malachim. Third from the last row, five over from the end, you can’t miss me, I’m the tallest one in that row. Usually sing the middle voice so it’s really just the same note over and over most of the time-”

“You weren’t doing your job, were you? I hear there’s a big fuss going on about the humans getting kicked out of the Garden. Really, what a thing to do for a first offense, seems awfully unfair to me.”

“I, I don’t know? I wasn’t on duty then, I was just put on duty now and-”

“So where's that sword of yours? Didn’t they issue you a sword? I’ve seen them before, big flaming buggers, ready to smite?”

“I...I, well, uh, I was never issued a sword? I’m just a low-ranking angel, standing in for someone more important.” Crowley’s mouth moved into a nervous smile, and the angel slowly began to inch away from the Prince of Hell.

“Oh? No sword?” Aziraphale brightened.

“...no sword,” Crowley drooped.

“Excellent.”

As the angel backed away from the Prince of Hell, Aziraphale stretched out a black-feathered wing as Crowley nearly stepped off the end of the wall, gently nudging the angel back to safety.

Startled, Crowley nearly tipped over again, but once more Aziraphale righted him. 

“Tricky thing, this gravity business,” Aziraphale said gently. “You’ll have to be more careful; you can hit terminal velocity rather quickly if your wings aren’t ready to fly.”

“Yes, tha-”

“No, no need to thank me. Best not. Even a Prince of Hell could get into a spot of trouble were one caught saving angels. Let’s just keep this between you and me,” Aziraphale winked.

Crowley felt hot and cold all of a sudden, both at once, realizing what had happened. Had a discorporation happened so soon, so quickly after being issued a corporeal form, it would have been a major disciplinary breach and the thought of what consequences would have come down in head office sent a shiver through the angel. But perhaps discorporation would have been preferred; everything was so much worse than the angel could have imagined now that Crowley was in a bind, doubly indebted to a Lord of Hell within minutes of being assigned to Earth.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Crowley.”

“Sure thing,” Crowley said politely. “It’s nice to meet you too, Lord Azir- uh, or is it Prince, erm-”

“Let’s dispense with the formalities. Just as I’ll call you Crowley, you may call me Aziraphale.”

“All right.” A hint of a nervous smile touched Crowley’s lips. 

“Oh how lovely,” Aziraphale smiled at Crowley.

“Gkh?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale’s eyes lingered on the angel before turning to look up to the iron gray sky. “It’s starting to rain.”

As the Prince of Hell stretched out his arms to welcome the falling water, he stretched out a black-feathered wing to shelter the shivering angel from the coming storm.


	3. The Second Prince of Hell

**Head Office, Upstairs**

“I'd like to request a few job-related items,” Crowley said. “Specifically, health and safety items.”

“Isn’t this a matter for your Principality?”

“I already asked, and they sent me to their supervisor in the Powers, who sent me to their supervisor in the Virtues. And after I was sent to a Dominion, he sent me right up to someone in Thrones who sent me to a Cherubim who told me to come here to ask an Archangel directly,” Crowley said, feigning the patience he didn’t really have, after ages of trying to get his case heard, omitting the parts where he waited around empty offices or stood at the back of long lines of other working angels who also needed someone in authority to approve something.

“If that’s the case, you really ought to be talking to Michael. Or Sandalphon. Crowley, you should know better; I’m not in charge of office supplies or requisitions-”

“Yes, I’ve already talked to Michael and Sandalphon. They told me to ask you.”

“Have you tried Uriel?”

“Yes, I have,” Crowley said impatiently. “I’ve asked everyone in the hierarchy that I’m supposed to ask, and they all told me that you had to personally approve it.”

“All right, fine. I'm listening.”

“I'll need a flaming sword, to start...”

“You know we don't hand flaming swords out to anyone lower than a Principality.”

“Then how about just a sword? A normal one?”

Gabriel smiled indulgently. “You don’t need swords.”

“Yes I do! I’m up against a Prince of Hell down there, and I have been given literally nothing to fight him with.”

“Crowley, you know that as an angel, your goodness and grace are all the weapons you need,” Gabriel explained. “After all, we did beat them in the War in Heaven.”

“Yes, because the Almighty intervened and made them Fall.”

“Okay, I admit there may be a technicality to our win, but it was still a win. After all, a win with an asterisk is still a win. The Forces of Good will always triumph against the Forces of Evil. Anyone with faith knows that, and I know you have faith.”

“Right...”

“Look, if you’re worried about your safety, here's a whistle. If something goes wrong, just blow on it and one of us will come help you.”

Crowley stared at the small carved bone whistle in his hand. He pressed it to his lips, blowing air through it so that it made a shrill little sound.

He knew for a fact that a) no one in Heaven could hear this from Earth and that b) this would only make a Prince of Hell laugh in his face if he dared to use it. 

Crowley tucked it into a hidden pocket in his long sleeve.

“...okay, what about this, Gabriel, what if you reassign someone else, someone more powerful. Like a Cherubim. Or even better, a Seraphim. No, an Archangel-”

“And get into an arms race with Hell? No, I don’t think so,” Gabriel shook his head. “That would be stupid. Everyone is already in their correct assignments, as they should be.”

“But Gabriel, this is a Prince of Hell we’re talking about-”

“And we're all sure you can handle it. Good work, Crowley, keep up the good job! Remember, we’re always here to support you when you need us!” Gabriel beamed, with an expression of insincere sincerity. Before Crowley could interject, the archangel walked away. 

“...I'm going to be destroyed, aren't I?” Crowley drooped, trudging back toward the ladders to return to Earth. Pressing his hands over his face, Crowley sighed. It was already a bad day, and while there had been not so many days since the Earth had been formed, it seemed like all Crowley could see ahead was a progression of bad days that only got worse.

Of course, it did immediately get worse, for the next thing that happened was that Crowley nearly ran into someone.

“Oh, sorry about that, my fault,” Crowley muttered, as a pair of firm hands steadied his shoulders.

“How did your meeting go?” A familiar voice, and Crowley opened his eyes, hands dropping to his sides to see Aziraphale standing before him, plump hands resting on Crowley’s slim shoulders.

The angel nearly fell over. “...what are you doing here?!”

“Asmodeus comes up for regular meetings in Heaven, and he asked me to join him today to stand second.”

“Meetings. In Heaven?” Crowley blinked.

“You didn’t know? Well, Beelzebub’s too important for this job, and I’m not important enough, so...”

Crowley’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought we were supposed to be enemies.”

“Oh, this doesn’t stop us from being enemies, my dear boy. Nothing has changed but we must think of practicality. After all, could anything get done if both sides didn’t know what was going on in advance? That would be sheer madness,” Aziraphale said.

“I...” Speechless, Crowley felt the foundations of faith deep down inside shifting, before trying very hard to keep his belief in the system from cracking. “I really should get going. There’s work to be done after all-”

“Oh, but before you go, you should meet my counterpart.” Aziraphale turned to the ladders, offering a hand to another demon who hefted himself up the ladder and out onto the cool gleaming expanse of Heaven. A very tall and blond demon clad in black robes lined in venomous green, crowned with black meteoric iron in the shape of twining serpents, whose sharp green eyes fixed on Crowley the moment that he stepped forward.

Crowley found himself backing up, just a little.

“Crowley, this is Asmodeus, Second Prince of Hell.”

“Pleased to meet you?”

Asmodeus laughed. “Is this the Representative on Earth that we’re supposed to be concerned about? Oh, but a beauty to be certain, a rare jewel in Heaven’s crown with that dark copper hair and those golden eyes. Do you think that Heaven knew what it was doing when it sent this one?”

“Apparently,” Aziraphale said dryly. “After all, Heaven doesn’t make mistakes.”

The two Princes of Hell exchanged looks of amusement.

“My dear Aziraphale, you are ever so lucky to have been named Representative. I think I should have liked to have had the honor.”

“How did you win?” Crowley glanced at Aziraphale, curious, before realizing he should also keep an eye on Asmodeus too, just in case.

“It was down to me and Asmodeus, and I won. So it could have easily been a serpent instead of an octopus that did the tempting.”

“Did you fight for the position? Is that what they do down there? Er, Downstairs.” Crowley wondered, knowing that the honor of being Representative on Earth was merely an accident when it came to Heaven’s decision; Crowley just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when they were looking for someone to be volunteered.

“Oh no,” Aziraphale chuckled, his voice dark with amusement. “No, there was no fight. It was rock-paper-scissors, and I cheated.”

“...oh.”

“Extra arms, you know.” And for a moment, the black-robed Aziraphale had four arms and four legs and then two legs and six arms and then just a lot of arms and Crowley nearly fell over before Aziraphale reverted back to something more recognizable.

“Now I wish I had tried harder,” Asmodeus hissed. “All of the Earth as one’s private garden, and a charming angel to chase around and _thwart_ …now that would have been splendid. I think I would have enjoyed that quite a bit.”

“Uh, I’m right here...” Crowley muttered. “Haven’t left at all.”

“I must say that I’m glad to have been chosen,” Aziraphale said smoothly. “It’s quite an honor.”

“By cheating.”

“Just as a demon lord should do. And if you interfere, Asmodeus, I’ll gut you like a...whatever it is that the humans gut.”

“A duck? A fish?” Crowley suggested, but it didn’t seem that the demons heard.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Asmodeus lied, eyeing Crowley as the Second Prince of Hell paced a slow circle around the angel. “Absolutely wouldn’t dare infringe on your rights, my infernal brother.”

“Good, because if you do, I might have to destroy you.” Aziraphale smiled brilliantly.

“Oh, Aziraphale, let’s not bring up that kind of unpleasantness. It’s far too soon to talk like that when a little torture goes a long way. My dearest brother, I think it’s best to let the angel make the choices of who is preferred. We may not have free will as the humans do, but exercising a little choice is always...wait, where did the angel go?”

“Back to Earth, I presume. Well, good luck on your meeting; it seems that I have some work to do-”

“Aziraphale...” Asmodeus’ voice had a tone of warning in it. “You’re not to leave until we’re done here.”

“Oh, but if you recall the rules are that both Representatives must be on Earth at the same time. Beelzebub has been quite firm about that. It’s a very reasonable rule if you think about it. Have fun at your meeting; say hi to Michael and Gabriel for me.” And with a wave, Aziraphale swung himself down onto a ladder and clambered down fast, multiple arms and legs helping him navigate the narrow ladder back down to Creation.

Halfway down and still in the high heavens, Aziraphale paused and looked down. Beyond the great plumes of clouds where the sky opened back up again, white wings spread wide as the angel glided the rest of the way down to Earth in a slow graceful motion, the small white figure stained with a dark splotch of coppery red that fluttered like a flame, and Aziraphale felt his breath catch.


	4. The Nephilim

“I know we’re supposed to but...” Crowley sighed, flopping down onto the soft grass beneath the shade of a thorny acacia tree. “I just don’t think I can. Orders are orders, right? But these orders? To marry and beget children...with humans?”

Crowley looked up at the sky, hands clenched into tight fists. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t...disobey. What should I do? Lord, please...if I should...” But the words caught in Crowley’s throat, and he realized he shouldn’t be bothering the Almighty with something so trivial. An angel of his stature was not even the kind that had ever seen the Lord, much less converse directly with the Almighty the way higher ranked angels did.

The prayer ached briefly within him, but the pain eased and it went out of him like a sigh, practiced praise streaming upwards to Heaven.

“Exactly who is it that you’re talking to?” And the possibilities of who the speaker was went through his mind in a flash until he settled on recognizing the actual voice.

Crowley turned to see the Prince of Hell standing over him, black wings blotting out the sunlight.

“Ack! It’s you!” Crowley sat up immediately, scrambling to move away.

“It’s me,” Aziraphale agreed. “Please, don’t get up on my account. I know you angels are a polite lot, but please, you needn’t be so formal with me.” And the Prince of Hell sat down on the soft grass beside Crowley, his hands folded neatly in his lap.

“Er, uh, that is, I...should really go...” 

“Nonsense, you just got here and so did I. What seems to be troubling you, my dear boy?”

“Nothing,” Crowley lied, smoothing rumpled feathers.

“I didn’t think angels could lie,” Aziraphale’s mouth moved in a smile that seemed to have far too many small and jagged teeth.

Crowley blinked. “It wasn’t a lie,” he lied.

“You were thinking about disobeying,” Aziraphale said smoothly. “Is this about the business of begetting? Is that what it is?”

Crowley felt himself tense up in a jolt. “How did you know?”

“We received the same orders on our side. It’s not a surprise; they’ve been making plans for it for ages in the dailies.”

“Dailies?”

“You know, the meetings up in Heaven.”

“There are. Daily meetings? With members of Hell? Up in Heaven?” Crowley said slowly, not believing it. “I thought it was a one-time thing, that time I ran into you and-.”

“Oh no, didn’t you know? Asmodeus goes every day. I only get asked to go on occasion. It’s been going on since the beginning. Well, since the Fall, that is. How else does anything get done?”

“I thought...”

“Yes?”

“Don’t know what I thought.” Crowley felt himself droop back down to earth. 

“My dear, there are so many things that must be done that requires the regular coordination and cooperation of the other side that we leave nothing to chance. After all, how could anything get done if neither side knew what the other was doing?”

“I thought we were supposed to be enemies.”

“What is hate but the obverse of love? After all, you couldn’t hate someone you didn’t love,” Aziraphale said reasonably and to that Crowley had no answer. 

The angel was silent for a long time, wondering if he should go, but then the Prince of Hell caught his eye.

“But that is neither here nor there. Those are bigger forces than we can manage or control, and it’s best to set them aside for now. Why don’t you tell me why you are considering disobeying?” Aziraphale said gently, and Crowley could not help but feel a little twinge of strange emotion at the kindness and warmth in the Prince of Hell’s voice.

“I...” Crowley gulped. “Er, uh, that is...I...”

“Yes?” Aziraphale’s expression was soft, and the way the sunlight gleamed upon those blue eyes, Crowley felt as if he were staring into the sun-dappled sea, and his breath caught at the beauty.

“Just don’t know if I can do it, that’s all,” Crowley muttered. 

“Do what?”

“You know...er...eh...” Crowley waved his hands vaguely in the air. “That thing…the...”

“The begetting?”

“The begetting,” Crowley agreed, miserable.

“Perhaps you should ask an expert,” Aziraphale suggested. “Why don’t we call up Asmodeus and ask him? He is after all, a specialist in these matters.”

Crowley turned a few different and interesting shades, and it made Aziraphale take closer notice.

“What’s wrong? Why shouldn’t we ask the demon of lust what to do? It is his department, after all.”

“Um, er...just don’t want to trouble him?” Crowley said lamely, mentally scrambling for an excuse. “He is an important Prince of Hell after all.”

“Quite right. Whereas I am an unimportant Prince of Hell,” Aziraphale teased, amused at the angel’s embarrassment.

“Oh I’m sorry!” Mortified, Crowley stumbled over his words. “I didn’t mean it that way, it’s just that I um...uh, it’s fine if it’s you. I’d appreciate your input, because you are an important Prince of Hell and would... I mean, if you could give me some suggestions. Uh. We needn’t bother anyone else?”

“Well. It’s not so daunting, my dear, once you recall that all animals do it too,” Aziraphale explained in a reasonable manner, pleased by Crowley’s words. “And right now with a corporeal body, you are part animal as well. We all are, really. Just let the animal part take over, that’s easy to do.”

“...guh?” Crowley asked.

“And of course, we must not forget that the Almighty has given out the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.”

“Was that a commandment proper or-?”

“If it weren’t, I would think that the animals and humans would not be so fruitful and mutiplicitous.”

“Oh. Oh! You’re right.”

“Of course I am. But that’s not the problem is it?” Aziraphale intuited. “You’re...shy aren’t you?”

“Shy? Me? Naaaaah. Course not, I’m not shy, that’s ridiculous-”

“Here. I’ll show you something that can help get you started.” Aziraphale held out his hand, offering it to Crowley, and for the first time Crowley noticed the black crown of a ring that Aziraphale wore on the pinky of his right hand, twisting tentacles curved around a round finger.

Crowley glanced up and realized the Prince of Hell no longer wore his crown of meteoric iron on his head. It seemed strange to see Aziraphale uncrowned, and he realized that he had grown accustomed to Aziraphale, so much so that noticing a change in his appearance was unsettling.

Crowley reached out, letting the Prince of Hell take his hand.

“Humans need warming up. You can’t just go straight to begetting my dear, you must build up to it,” Aziraphale said. “May I?”

“Yes.”

And taking Crowley’s hand in both of his, Aziraphale pressed a kiss to Crowley’s palm that Crowley felt all the way down to the bottom of his feet.

“Ah…!” 

“And then, you get closer.” Aziraphale kissed the tips of Crowley’s fingers, one at a time, before turning his hand so that the Prince of Hell could kiss the inside of his wrist, sending shivers sliding over all of his skin.

“Closer yet,” Aziraphale breathed, and a fiendishly strong arm wrapped around Crowley’s waist, pulling him close. Before he could panic, before he could pull away, soft lips pressed against his throat, and a strange sound came from deep inside him that Crowley had never heard before.

“And then you give them a kiss,” Aziraphale pressed his lips lightly to Crowley’s lips, a faint touch of flesh upon flesh that ended as quickly as it began.

Crowley’s lips parted with a breath, and for a moment he did not know where or when or even who he was, just that the sky was awfully blue but not the deep blue of the demon lord’s eyes.

“Ngh?” Crowley asked, before realizing that he was in the arms of a Prince of Hell. Tensing up, he felt Aziraphale’s arm loosen immediately, and with some strange regret that he could not understand, he watched as the Prince of Hell drew away.

“And then, if they enjoy it and want more, you kiss them some more, touch some more, etcetera etcetera, until it all flows naturally and then you let the begetting happen. Please them and consider their pleasure and it will guide you until the animal parts take over and then you just flow naturally into joining,” Aziraphale continued, folding his hands together in a gesture of elegant politeness as if nothing had happened.

“Oh...yes. Yes, of course! I understand now completely. Be of good service, like they always say up in Heaven. I will endeavor to be of service, and do a good job no matter what-”

“Mmm, and remember that in pleasing the other, you come to your own pleasure as well,” Aziraphale’s eyes gleamed with a strange, underwater light, and Crowley retreated minutely.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all,” Aziraphale smiled, and he patted the angel on his slender shoulder, a light touch of encouragement. “I’m sure you’ll understand when time comes.”

“When the time comes...” Crowley sighed. “Um. Er. Uh. That is...”

“Yes?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows went up.

“Uh. That is...erm...about that time...”

“You have a question.”

“Just...curious is all. You know how it is. Uh. Curiosity. Say, Aziraphale,” Crowley said carefully, the words slow and deliberate. “Just...what? Are Hell’s orders? On the same thing? The er...”

“Nephilim?”

“Nephilim. Right. Begetting the Nephilim,” Crowley nodded, a bit too much, and then stopped when he realized he was so nervous that he almost could not stop.

“Ah. That is not for you to know. Opposition, you know,” Aziraphale said, with gentle reproach. 

“Oh, I’m sorr-”

“But seeing as how I am feeling rather...evil today and in the mood to break some rules, I think perhaps you could be given a hint. ‘Breed with the humans.’”

Crowley stared.

Aziraphale stared back.

“Is there-” Crowley began.

“Something on your-” Aziraphale said, at the same time, before closing his mouth and gesturing graciously for Crowley to speak. 

“And that’s all?” Flustered, Crowley looked away.

“That’s all. Why are you so concerned? Aren’t your orders the same?” 

“Well...that’s a good question.” Crowley cleared his throat. “My orders are a little different? The first part’s the same. But the second part is: ‘And then report back to Heaven immediately for reassignment.’”

“Oh, I see.” Aziraphale’s expression changed, growing cold. “Who said that? The Metatron? Gabriel?”

Crowley shrugged, hands thrown up in a gesture of helplessness. “Can’t say. Don’t know. I was told by another angel just one rank up from me.”

“Too low in the choirs to be told what’s going on. And certainly too far from the seat of power to know why.”

Crowley agreed. “Too low-ranked to be anywhere near the decision-making.”

“But I bet it was Gabriel,” Aziraphale said venomously. “They really want you to return to Heaven right away?”

“Right away and reassigned to another part of Earth. It...wouldn’t be a problem? Normally. Except...um. Observation of humans, you know. Over time. May have noticed that they need a lot of care when they’re carrying. Special foods and the like, and protection from illness and cold and heat and all that. Er. Then uh, when the little ones are growing they also need special foods and protection from illness and cold and heat and all the wild animals with their sharp teeth and claws and-”

“You don’t feel right leaving.”

“I know what happens to humans when they don’t have support. We shouldn’t, I mean, it’s not ri-” And then alarmed at the disloyalty of his own words, Crowley closed his mouth. 

“I heard nothing.” If Aziraphale had anything, it was discretion. Discretion, and a whole lot of clever arms. “But you do know that you might have to tell me where you’re being assigned. Because it could be that a Prince of Hell might be causing trouble in that neighborhood. In the general region.”

“Trouble?”

“The kind of trouble that would need a good thwarting,” Aziraphale said. “Some arrangement could be made for this kind of trouble to last a while. In fact, even as long as a human being lives. As long as it takes.”

“An...arrangement.” Crowley felt his blood run cold. This was, after all, the Adversary, or at least, the Representative of the Adversary and making an arrangement with the Adversary’s lackey went against everything that he knew was right and good and decent. What price would he pay for this deception? This shameful display of disloyalty?

But then he looked over, at the blue-black glossy sheen of the demon’s wings, wings that made even the most polished lapis lazuli look dull, and he remembered that even a Prince of Hell had been an angel once too. 

“Well, what do you think?” Aziraphale smiled gently, and Crowley felt his mouth twitch just a little bit.

“In training they said that demons, especially Princes of Hell, need a good thwarting now and then. And I was chosen by Heaven to do that thwarting. As best as I can.”

“As best you can,” Aziraphale agreed.

“And I’ll do as much thwarting as I can!” Crowley said with growing confidence. 

“I’m certain of it,” Aziraphale agreed.

“Prepare yourself, Prince of Hell, for some serious thwar- thwartin- thwartage!” 

“Oh, I just can’t wait to be thwartaged,” Aziraphale beamed.


	5. The Supper

When Crowley closed his eyes, he could hear the thrumming of his harp as the wind played it with invisible fingers, vibrating the tight-wound strings. The cold breeze tangled through his long crimson hair, stroking curling locks with icy fingers. With a sigh, he looked up from his seat under the feathery leaves of a tamarisk tree. The shade had grown unpleasantly chilly; though the sun rose higher in the sky it had grown cooler, so he stood up, picked up his harp, and moved closer to the river where the sunlight still shone bright.

He touched the harp; it was nothing like Heaven, where all music was made by choirs of angels. The humans had found a clever way to make sounds, by taking a weapon and stringing it with gut and sinew until over time it had turned away from a weapon into a way of making music that was separate from that music of the air passing through the body, the life passing through from nose to mouth.

Clouds moved quickly across the sky from a stronger wind that did not touch the Earth and Crowley wondered if it would be blustery up there if he were to fly toward Heaven. But today was not a day for flying; today he was earthbound. There was nothing that had to be done, yet he was not exempt from duty, waiting and whiling away his time until the next assignment which could come now, or tomorrow, or ten years from now. Even a hundred.

It felt like exile, and perhaps it was.

Crowley frowned. Was this what the Fall was like? For the other-

A flutter of wind and the turbulence in the air made him realize that someone had joined him, and for a moment Crowley wondered who it was until he saw black wings that briefly blotted out the sky.

“Oh, it’s you,” Aziraphale gave Crowley a look, eyes glancing over the angel. “What are you doing here?”

“Should ask you the same thing,” Crowley said, almost sulkily.

“Just dropped by for a visit. It’s been rather dull on Earth recently. I see you’ve folded your wings away?” There was a hint of acid in Aziraphale’s voice and it made Crowley nearly unfold his wings, but that seemed like just too much trouble, so he did nothing.

“It works better this way. The humans have strange ideas about me if they can see my wings. Better hiding them than making a fuss. They’re bound to worship someone who has wings. It’s in all their iconography. You know, what with all the sacred pine cones and sacred trees and such.”

“What’s wrong with being worshiped?” Aziraphale asked.

“Eh, it’s not for me,” Crowley shrugged. “Makes it harder to do my work if they only show me their best.”

“I see you’ve got one of those human things,” Aziraphale made a face, pointing at the harp. “Terrible, absolutely awful. You know, they use those and other sound-making devices to drive us away from their homes and lands.”

“Does it work?” Crowley’s hand inched toward the harp and Aziraphale gave him a look of warning. 

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you, not if you don’t want me to destroy your instrument. Really, it’s not a matter of working or not working; it’s just that we demons would rather not listen to those sounds.” 

“Why?”

Aziraphale waved it off with an eloquent gesture. “Certainly I can’t tell you all of Hell’s secrets. Say, angel, have you eaten?”

“Uh, er, well, no? I don’t need to eat?” Crowley blinked.

“Oh, but eating is one of the great pleasures of being on Earth. Please, let me make you supper.”

“Supper? Isn’t that a human custom?”

“Indeed, and a rather lovely one, where people gather around amicably to share what they have, to fill empty stomachs with food and empty hearts with companionship. I thought it was just a clever fad at first, but it turns out that the humans need it to survive. Well, we celestials need not survive on food, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t nourish us all the same.”

“But...uh, material nourishment? I mean, we’re not supposed to...um, gross matter sullies the celestial temples of our bodies...” Crowley trailed off, looking down at the plain robes of Heavenly make that covered his limbs.

“You’ve been listening to Gabriel again, haven’t you? What have I told you about that?” Aziraphale smiled, with a mouthful of sharp teeth and without any humor at all.

“That I shouldn’t? But he’s upper management, I can’t disobey him.”

“Eating sullies nothing,” Aziraphale said. “Nor does drinking. After all, when you go into the water, don’t you sometimes get a little in your mouth or up your nose?”

“I don’t go in the water,” Crowley admitted. “I can’t.”

Skeptical, Aziraphale gave him a look. “You can’t?”

“See?” At that, Crowley stood up and walked over to the lapping waters of the river. Reaching out he gently parted the rushes as he moved to the water, birds eyeing him from their tall swaying perches as he passed by. Striding forth, his feet traveled over the water but not into it. 

Below the water, fish gently rose to the surface, nibbling at the tender flesh of the soles of his feet before darting away, realizing Crowley was too big to eat. Dragonflies darted about Crowley, inspecting him with curious multifaceted eyes.

Crowley turned back to look at Aziraphale with a shrug.

“Well, that is certainly a thing. I hadn’t expected that. All right, Crowley, why don’t you think about it this way then? When it rains, don’t you sometimes get a few drops in your mouth or nose?”

“Yes?” Crowley turned back, stepping carefully onto the shore so as not to step on any living creature. “It can’t be helped, especially when flying. I don’t see how that-”

“My dear angel, think of it reasonably; that little bit of water did not ‘sully’ your ‘celestial temple’ as they say, even though it is material matter. Do you feel sullied? No? Of course not, that’s a silly thought that the Almighty’s creation could corrupt our celestial selves. So what harm is a little human food and drink? Especially when it will help you keep up appearances with the humans.”

At that, Crowley had nothing to say.

“Are you sure you don’t want any help?” Crowley asked, fretful and anxious. Was it because he could not be of good service for once? Or perhaps it was because there was already a lot of arms and a lot of hands doing a lot of work and it seemed that for one being, Aziraphale was doing quite a bit of toiling.

“Oh, of course not. Why don’t you have a seat and rest? This would be of course much easier if we were at one of my houses but I can make do with what I have,” Aziraphale said.

“One of your...” Crowley blinked. “Wait, how are you doing that? And how are you standing?” He pointed to the working hands.

One pair was busy roasting a large carp over a hot fire.

Another pair was busy cutting onions and garlic and wild greens that they had found miraculously growing along the banks of the river.

A third pair was kneading dough for bread with strong plump fingers.

And the hands of a fourth pair were overseeing all the details; one stretching forth to add some more wood to the fire, another sprinkling salt from a small pouch onto the chopped vegetables.

Aziraphale shrugged. “Oh, all my arms and hands have a mind of their own. I just let them take care of the work. It’s rather amusing to watch, isn’t it?”

“But that doesn’t answer the question, how are you sta- Oh no, please don’t!” Quick as can be, Crowley stepped in to part two hands that had gotten tangled together and were wrestling each other, fingers moving in strange and distressing angles as they grappled.

“It happens,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. “When I let them do their own thing. Shall I get them under control?” The two hands, one each gripped in Crowley’s hands, slipped out of his grip and entwined their fingers with Crowley’s fingers. With a gasp, Crowley stepped back, shaking off the Prince of Hell as if he had been burned.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said, though he was absolutely not sorry.

One of the overseeing hands, the one that had been seasoning the food pulled away wriggling its fingers as though it had an idea. It angled around to the other overseeing hand and briefly meshed fingers together before dipping away to pull something out of thin air with a commanding gesture; it was a large ceramic pot, tapered at the bottom.

“Er, uh...so um...would you like some help?” Crowley asked, rubbing his hands together as if to shake off the memory of the touch, and Aziraphale grinned. 

“Certainly you can help. Here, why don’t you hold the jar for me. Sit, so you can hold it properly.”

“Sure.” Crowley took the jar from Aziraphale, and noticed that a heady scent wafted up from the rounded lip.

“Smells like stale fruit.” Curious, Crowley sniffed.

“You mean, finely aged fruit,” Aziraphale corrected him. “Carefully aged grape juice to be precise. Try not to drink the dregs, it’s rather full of sediment.”

“You expect me? To drink this?”

“Why not?”

“It’s...” Crowley made a face. “Unnatural.”

“It’s made from fruit and the natural processes of time. How is that possibly unnatural?” As he spoke, Aziraphale drew his hands back, one after another, as the hands finished their jobs, until somehow he was again standing on two legs and had two arms.

Crowley felt a strange sense of relief, even as he puzzled over the problem. “I...uh.”

“Here. I’ll drink first to prove that it’s safe.” The Prince of Hell sat down beside him and took the jar from him, taking a long drink.

Crowley stared as Aziraphale licked a golden droplet of wine from his lips.

“And haven’t you seen humans drink this? They don’t feel any ill effects. Well, until later, and we don’t have the biological processes that leave us hungover. Even then the damage is not lingering, for the most part, when taken in moderation. I promise, if you don’t like it, you can miracle the substance out of your body.”

“You can do that?”

“All of us can,” Aziraphale explained. “It’s a trivial matter, really.”

“Oh.” Crowley stared into the golden well of wine that glistened in the late afternoon sunlight. “Maybe later.”

“There is no pressure, of course. You may do as you like.”

“That sounds like a temptation,” Crowley said crossly.

“Angel, were I to tempt you, you would know it,” Aziraphale said tartly. “Now that you understand where we stand, the fish is done! Let’s have ourselves a nibble.”


	6. The Fish

The savory taste of roasted fish still lingering in his mouth, Crowley leaned forward to warm his hands as he watched the spark and flicker of the campfire that burned between him and Aziraphale. Pleasantly full was a sensation that Crowley had never experienced, and to him it felt good beyond measure. It was strange to realize that some of the unpleasant malaise that he had been living with must have been hunger or something like that and that food could assuage it, though he did not need food to survive. But eating settled some low-grade anxiety that had clung to his corporeal innards like a disease, and having that hollow feeling go away made him feel much better. 

And drinking made him feel even better than just eating.

“You really can’t go in the water?” Aziraphale asked, passing Crowley the wine jar again. “What a terrible waste. It’s a fantastic sight to see, all the wondrous creatures of the deep. Why, most of the world is water! It’s ridiculous for Heaven’s Representative on Earth to be so limited.”

Crowley drank deeply before returning the jar to Aziraphale. “Maybe if...maybe if I were a more important angel. Like a Pri. Principal. Princeps. Prince-” Crowley wondered why the words stuck thick on his tongue. Could it have been that sweet delicious golden wine? Or was it just the awkwardness he always seemed to feel around the Prince of Hell.

“You mean, a Principality?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Way up the ranks. Maybe then I’d have more powers and be stronger and be able to go into water and have a flaming sword and other useful things but I’m just an ordinary angel. No one important. That’s why I put away my wings, you know. Don’t want them trying to take that from me.”

Alarmed, Aziraphale sat up. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“No, they wouldn’t. Collec- that is, cal- uh, take a deep breath, it’s not something even they would do. They’re not evil, not like your lot. No one goes around tearing the wings off angels for disobedience. Just don’t want them to take my job from me. Wouldn’t want to cause a fuss among the humans that gets reported Upstairs and you know, uh, get er, repri- rep...chewed out. Demoted. Sent back to the choirs. Sing A over and over again. Middle voice business, hardly ever let you sing the D above that. That’s only for special occasions. Anything higher? Forget about it. Anyway, this is an important job, you know. A real honor,” Crowley said, hoping that by saying it, that it would be true. “Besides. I’ve...grown fond of this place.”

“You mean Earth?”

Crowley nodded, gesturing for more wine. Aziraphale handed him the wine jar which tipped over precipitously before Aziraphale helped straighten the heavy vessel, his hand steadying Crowley’s. 

“No, wait.” Aziraphale rubbed his fingers together. “Perhaps that’s enough for now,” he said gently, drawing the wine jar away. 

“Aww, I want some more...”

“Oh look, it’s empty,” the demon lied, miracling away the rest of the wine. “Fancy that. Maybe we should lie back and look at the clouds as they pass by?”

“Oh, that sounds lovely.” And with a thud, Crowley laid back down on the grassy ground, which seemed miraculously soft, as soft and pleasant as a bed of fine sun-warmed sand. He stretched out his arms, and his right hand found the smooth curve of the base of his harp, and without thinking, his fingers passed over the strings, not enough to sound the notes properly, but the instrument hummed sweetly at his touch.

“Please,” Aziraphale said, his voice registering distress. “Please don’t.”

Crowley blinked and looked over his left shoulder at Aziraphale, who had propped himself up on one elbow and was looking over at him.

“What’s wrong with music? Music is all around us...even the birds-”

“Not fond of them either, really.” Aziraphale said curtly. 

“Why? They’re...so nice. They’re… flappy. You know, flap flap flap and off they go! Just like us. And they fly and they swim and they walk and...okay sometimes they’re bitey but at least they don’t have teeth and-”

“It’s not that, it’s...it’s the music.” Aziraphale’s voice dropped to a low murmur. “Reminds me of Heaven. Rather don’t like that.”

“Bad memories?”

“Good memories.” Aziraphale looked away. “I...we don’t like being reminded of the time before the Fall. Because...”

“Because,” Crowley agreed. “Because it would mean that She loved some of us better and others She will not forgive.”

Aziraphale was quiet, so quiet that Crowley thought he had run off, but when he turned to look at the Prince of Hell, it seemed that a strange shimmer of dark colors passed over Aziraphale’s skin before settling back to something that looked almost human.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Aziraphale lied. “Just a cloud passing over. That happens sometimes. You know, Lord of the Octopuses. We do that sometimes when a cloud passes by and the light changes. We octopuses that is.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Crowley sat up, and drew the harp into his arms, hugging it tight. “What if I told you that it’s not like that?”

“What’s not like what?” Aziraphale sounded irritated.

“Um, music. What if I told you that music is not like birds or Heaven. It’s very not much like Heaven at all.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Aziraphale’s eyes were fixed upon the clouds, and Crowley wondered what the Prince of Hell was thinking.

“Human music is absolutely...artificial. Nothing natural about it at all. And none of it comes from Heaven. They make it all here themselves on instruments they craft with their own hands. After all, they can’t ever equal the choirs of angels in their multitude. It’s just...you know, they’re nothing like angels. More like a bunch of yowling creatures trying their best to sound like an ideal that can’t exist here where everything is imperfect.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale sounded curious.

“If you’ll allow me, I’ll give you a demonstration. It...shouldn’t hurt, I swear.”

Aziraphale winced, but he nodded. “All right, I trust you.”

Crowley tuned the strings, watching Aziraphale to make certain that he wasn’t upsetting the prince of Hell. When he began the first notes of the song and sounded the strings properly, he looked away, focused on his fingers.

_Fortunate is this prince,  
For happy was his fate, and happy his ending.  
One generation passes away and the next remains,  
Ever since the time of those of old.  
The gods who existed before me rest now in their tombs…_

Crowley stopped, and glanced over at Aziraphale.

“Did you make that up?”

“What, me?” Crowley grinned. “Ha, no way. I couldn’t make up a song. Wouldn’t know how to. No imagination or free will, remember? I learned from listening to humans. This is one of their songs. They’re quite clever creatures. They come up with not just the words but the music too, and meld them to each other to fit.”

“Like giving the words spirit. Or giving the music heart.”

Crowley nodded, feeling the words settling strangely inside of himself.

“Play me the rest of the song, will you?”

“All right, but I might have to stop if I forget a word. I don’t know it as well as I would like to know it.”

“Don’t do that. Just keep playing. I’ve never heard it before, so I wouldn’t know what’s wrong. Trust yourself and just keep playing.”

After that, there was miraculously more wine in the jar, and that was the last Crowley remembered before waking up alone beside the warm ashes of the fire.

It was late in the day now, and it seemed that the setting sun tinted the whole of the world a rosy pink, and he felt strangely good, as if a deep calm had filled his insides as the food and wine had filled his stomach.

He tried to remember what happened. Aziraphale had thanked him for the song, and they had drunk some more wine and then? He remembered laying back down on the soft ground, the heat of the fire, and…

Crowley sat up, and as he did, he felt a gentle weight upon his chest that was not there before. Reaching up to touch it, he felt the weight tug at the cord that fastened at the neck of his white robes and he caught it with one hand as it swung down.

He looked down at the weight in his hand. It was a small pendant of turquoise, of a brilliant pale blue like the sky. Or like clear running water. And it was shaped like a fish, not a particularly attractive one, with bulging eyes, long barbels, and meticulously detailed fins; Crowley recognized it immediately as a fish that swam in an unusual way, belly-up in the water to look up at the world above. A ring of gold ran though the fish’s mouth, and it was from that ring that the pendant hung from the cord.

In his fingers, he knew immediately that this was not an artifact of Heaven or Hell, but something that had been made on Earth, an object made by human hands. And even though there was a peculiar ugliness to the creature, it was beautifully crafted. Love radiated from it, as hot as the campfire had been; whoever made it had put a lot of time and care into the little turquoise fish, and when it hung from his neck to rest against his chest, it felt like he was wearing a little piece of a star pressed against his skin.

Crowley smiled, pressing his hand over his heart so that he could press the pendant closer to himself, and tried to remember how he got it. Closing his eyes, he felt a strange floating sensation as though he had been flying even though he remembered that at the time he was still, lying on the ground. And then he had a vague memory of firm, plump fingers threading the pendant through the loosened cord of his robes, and a gentle voice saying something just as he was falling asleep.

His breath caught as he remembered the words.

“Please take this as a token of gratitude for the lovely music. And as a promise from me that someday you will be able to see the fish where they actually live...”


	7. The Great House

Drowsy with the afternoon heat, Crowley leaned against the limestone wall. Feeling the rough stone beneath her palm, she wondered when the humans might call for her to come inside and play. It was cooler here in the shaded colonnade just inside the courtyard than it was inside, but it was also close enough to hear any calls for musicians. From where she stood she could hear something of a ruckus going on in the main hall of the court as the pharaoh moved about his great house, and she wondered what kind of mischief the man was up to. She hadn’t been at court that long, only a few days, but it seemed that the human caused a commotion wherever he went. 

Perhaps this would be a good time to take a little nap, she thought, to sneak away and hide out from all the human silliness. But just before she decided to move, she felt the air itself shift, turning a little cooler and damper, and when she turned around, she was no longer alone.

“So.” Aziraphale said, appearing behind her. “What brings you to Memphis this time, Crowley? On assignment?”

Crowley startled at the Prince of Hell’s sudden appearance, flinching back, not immediately recognizing Aziraphale. She had never seen the Prince of Hell like this before, attired like a human being. Aziraphale wore a long plaited flaxen wig, hung with golden ornaments and crowned with dark blue lotuses. Blue eyes were limned with kohl and the voluptuous curves of her body were hugged tightly by a long sheath dress of grayish linen that was woven through with zigzagging lines of dark blue, crimson, and gold. Around her neck was a heavy collar necklace of beads of silver and lapis lazuli of a shade that was the color of the sea at dusk, a luminous blue that verged on charred black.

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale’s hand and there was that iron octopus ring, the symbol of a Prince of Hell, gleaming obsidian.

“My apologies. How do you do? I hope you are well, as I am,” Aziraphale smiled charmingly, and Crowley looked away.

“Eh, you know. Court musician,” Crowley said with a shrug, quickly getting over the surprise. After all, it was not the first time that the other side’s Representative had appeared before her like this. As time passed, it seemed that the surprise was wearing out and the pressing need for a flaming sword was slowly diminishing.

A human walked by, and Aziraphale’s head turned to follow. A moment later the demon’s skin color shifted, becoming a dark umber.

“What-” Crowley blinked.

“Camouflage,” Aziraphale winked.

A pleasant breeze blew through the courtyard, damp and cool as if the wind preceding rain, and the hem of her plain linen dress fluttered in the wind.

“White suits you well,” Aziraphale smiled, her eyes lingering on Crowley. “Makes the crimson of your hair even more striking. Is this sheer linen the style of the court? I should adjust mine to match...”

“White...looks good on you too. Except it looks a bit more, well, gray?”

“Rather. Couldn’t look out of place here where everyone likes their white linens but of course a demon of my stature can’t go around looking like the Opposition.”

“It looks very striking and almost white.”

“Never white, not anymore.” Aziraphale smiled a brittle smile, and then pointed to the pendant that hung from a delicate cord tied around Crowley’s neck. “I see you’re wearing a new necklace yourself. Nice pendant. But don’t humans usually wear such pendants in their hair? Protection from drowning or some such belief?”

“Oh yes,” Crowley tried to suppress a shy smile, touching the cool stone with her fingertips but feeling the heat of its creation inherent in the curves of stone. “But I want to keep it safe. It’s a gift from a friend.”

“A friend? I didn’t know angels were allowed to have friends, much less human friends.” A strangely familiar voice, and Crowley turned, only to feel her heart sink. It was Asmodeus, the Second Prince of Hell, and like Aziraphale, the Second Prince had taken on a female form. 

Taller than both Crowley and Aziraphale, the Second Prince was dressed in plain gray linen but with a striking collar of silver and malachite beads. Asmodeus too wore a ring of black meteoric iron, but hers was in the form of a serpent, curled around her finger. Something about Asmodeus wearing kohl around her bright green eyes made her seem particularly nefarious, and Crowley found herself shrinking away before this newcomer.

“Uh...” And Crowley could not speak for a moment, realizing that she did not know how to address Asmodeus.

“You may address me as Asmodeus, darling angel. We’re rather casual here on Earth. It’s not as though this is a formal meeting by any means,” Asmodeus said lightly, tossing back a thick blonde mane that had been braided into long thin plaits, hung with twisted golden ornaments that upon closer inspection were little serpents twined through her hair. “I see you’re here for the ceremony too. Have you come as Representative on Earth?”

“Ceremony?” 

“Did you not hear?” Asmodeus said, with a subtle hint of venom in her voice. “Oh, but you’re here for something else, aren’t you?”

“Court musician,” Crowley said, in a small voice.

“Where’s your harp then, little angel?” Asmodeus smirked.

“Not playing the harp? Playing the double pipes. Just made a new set of reeds too...and...” Crowley made an exaggerated gesture of dismay. “Oh no, I really ought to go, I need to replace the reed water and clean out the condensation and-”

“Strange,” Asmodeus said with feigned casualness. “I had it on good authority that you played the harp.”

Speechless, Crowley wondered how Asmodeus would know, and without meaning to he looked over at Aziraphale.

“Well darling,” Asmodeus smiled coldly, “it seems like you’re an angel of many talents. Perhaps we’ll see more of your abilities soon.” With that, Asmodeus strode off, disappearing into the palace complex.

“...wait! Hey!” Crowley startled, realizing that she was supposed to be thwarting any evil that might be coming from a Prince of Hell. But just then, Aziraphale decided to go the other direction.

“Wait!” Crowley cried out, unsure of who to follow.


	8. The Women

“Finally, the last one,” a leering court official said as Crowley turned the corner. She had been certain that she was following...well, one of the Princes of Hell, but now she realized she had other more pressing problems. The official was a handsome man of heroic stature in the prime of his life, which meant that he was still a bit shorter than Crowley but it made him nearly a giant among men. Attired like a priest, his freshly shaved head gleaming and the ceremonial leopard skin draped over his right shoulder, the man looked Crowley over with greedy, lascivious eyes. “Young woman, you have a beautiful body and a well-developed bosom. But your hair is not braided. Never mind, someone will do it. Have you been opened by childbirth?”

“Excuse me? I beg your pardon,” Crowley hissed. “You can’t just go around asking people that! It’s...rude. No, of course not, I-”

“Perfect. In you go!” The man gave Crowley a shove and closed the door behind her. As Crowley got her feet under herself, she could hear the click of the door being locked.

“But I’m a court...musician?” Crowley said lamely, to the closed door. 

She turned around. Besides herself and two Prince of Hell, there were seventeen other young women who were quickly undressing and putting on beaded net dresses...with nothing on underneath.

“Who was that?” 

“The chief lector priest and book-scribe, Djadjaemankh,” a young woman said as she walked past, her voice full of disdain. Crowley blinked; even by Egyptian standards her clothes were particularly revealing.

“He didn’t look much like a book-scribe or a lector-priest,” Crowley said.

“Well, he’s not much of one,” another young woman muttered as she struggled with her clothes.

“Here,” Aziraphale said, waving Crowley over. “Put this on.” 

“What’s going on?” Crowley blinked, relieved to see a familiar face. Aziraphale handed her the bead-net dress, long thin blue-green faience beads slithering with a clink in her hands.

“A ceremony,” Asmodeus said, tossing off her form-hugging sheath dress to reveal a body proportioned perfectly to the Egyptian canon of measure, whose smooth lustrous skin and thick braided hair made other human women stare at her with no small amount of envy. She slipped on the bead-net dress with ease, which was not so much a dress as a dress ornament, made in the form of a dress but without any cloth or fabric backing for modesty or comfort.

“They call it a ceremony, but it’s really no more than a diversion for a bored lech,” Aziraphale said with a scowl. “The pharaoh likes to have young women row about his private lake on a boat, before picking one for later.”

Horrified, Crowley nearly dropped the dress. “What do you mean, one for later?”

“I meant exactly what I said. Don’t worry, the odds of getting picked are 1 in 20.”

“Not bad odds, but not good odds either,” Asmodeus smirked. “Though of course, a little demonic intervention means that we won’t be picked.”

“...oh no...” Crowley murmured.

“Oh no?” Aziraphale asked, solicitous.

“I’m allotted only a certain amount of miracles every turn of the moon. And...I might have used them up already?” Crowley said, embarrassed.

“It’s hardly the first few days after the full moon. What did you use them up on? Snacks? Wine? Travel?” Aziraphale teased.

“Healing the sick,” Crowley said. “Kids, mostly. Would have been an epidemic otherwise.”

“Can’t you apply for more?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Of course, but I can’t if I’m here. I’d have to report to Heaven, ask the proper authority for permission, then fill out the correct documentation, and wait for it to be processed. Which...usually takes about a year or three. If I need it sooner, I can apply for an emergency waiver, but that usually takes at least five to seven business days to process...and they’ve been very clear what would happen if I go over.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine little angel. As long as you don’t stand out in any way,” Asmodeus’ smile was all teeth. Sharp teeth. “Just keep a low profile and I’m sure you won’t be noticed.”

“Good point. I can do that.”

“Now, you’ll need someone to braid your hair. All those gorgeous curling tresses. Mmm. Unless you’d like to dip into your reserve of miracles...of, which you don’t have,” Asmodeus said, reaching out to touch Crowley’s dark hair.

Crowley’s breath caught, but just before Asmodeus could touch her, Aziraphale batted the Second Prince of Hell’s hand away.

“It’s fine,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll manage this menial task, my infernal brother. You needn’t lower yourself to doing something so beneath your station. Besides, I have quite a few more hands.”

“But you’re a Prince of Hell too...” Crowley protested.

Aziraphale stretched out his hands, wiggling his fingers in anticipation. “Oh yes, but unlike Asmodeus, I’m quite fond of working with my hands.”

Aziraphale’s hands moved gently through Crowley’s hair, and Crowley looked down at her feet, at the plaited leather sandals that she wore, smudged faintly with dust that did not touch her skin. The touch of Aziraphale’s fingers combing through her hair left strange shivering sensations that ran up and down her spine and inadvertently she made a little sound in her throat that surprised herself; as far as she knew she had never made a sound like this before.

“I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” Aziraphale murmured, as fingers and many of them worked through her hair, some of them combing through long strands, others deftly plaiting her hair into braids.

“No, I’m fine, really,” Crowley gulped. “It feels...er...” And she noticed that Asmodeus was watching with a sharp eye, so she looked down, face hot with embarrassment. 

“Hmm?” Aziraphale wondered.

“Fine. I’m fine, it’s nothing,” Crowley muttered.


	9. The Boat Ceremony

“He’s rich all right,” Aziraphale said as they pulled the oars of the light skiff, sailing slowly past the pharaoh’s lavish pavilion set up on shore. Crowley turned her head to look toward the pharaoh’s entourage as they passed. Below shaded canopies of fine linen that fluttered in the hot desert breeze the pharaoh sat with the great priests and lords of the land, the men entertaining themselves with drinking and watching the women row the narrow vessel about the lake. Musicians played for their enjoyment on harps, rattles, and double pipes, and servants moved through the jovial crowd, ensuring that the cups were full of beer. 

“Ebony oars plated with gold, and the handles made of this expensive _sqb_ wood, plated with electrum.”

“A waste of perfectly good wood,” Crowley agreed. “Wood this fine shouldn’t be immersed in water.” She looked to Aziraphale who sat to her left. 

“The two of you should keep it down,” Asmodeus said from her seat ahead of Aziraphale at the front of the boat, pulling at the oars in time with the other young women.

“It’s not like he can hear us. No one can-” Crowley began, but Asmodeus turned back to give her an unpleasant smile. 

“No, darling angel, but if he notices you not rowing your odds might go from 1 in 20 to something a lot more unpleasant.“

“Actually, because of demonic interference, the odds are 1 in 18 now,” Aziraphale pointed out. “Which are better odds if you’re gambling and want to be that 1 in 18, as the smaller that second number is, the more likely it will happen. But in your particular case, I don’t think you want to be selected.”

“Surely you wouldn’t want to make it any worse,” Asmodeus added.

“Oh. No, you’re right.” Crowley shut her mouth. Shoulders hunched, she put herself to work, diligently pulling the oars of the light skiff in time with the other women. The sun beat down fierce, and Crowley wondered how many people today would be left with the marks of the bead-net dress as pale shadow lines writ across sun-darkened skin.

Some of the women began to lean over and dip their hands into the water of the private lake, splashing themselves to cool off and it seemed like the right thing to do, to appear as the mortals did. 

She leaned over the dark water, and by habit, briefly let go of the oar and pressed the fish pendant against her breast as she leaned out, keeping it safe. When she turned back, she noticed that Asmodeus was watching her. Quickly, she grabbed the oar and continued to paddle without missing a beat.

“A gift from a friend,” Asmodeus murmured to herself under her breath, a sly smile crossing her lascivious lips.

Seven, eight...nine times around the lake and it didn’t seem as if the pharaoh was tired yet of their labors as he directed them from his shaded pavilion on the shore. Crowley felt herself wilting in the heat. She was stronger than the humans, more resistant to heat or cold than any normal human but she was not impervious. A higher-ranked angel might have been given the means to stay almost entirely untouched by the effects of the material world but Crowley was not among those lofty beings.

Again, she leaned over the water, but this time as she let go of the pendant, there was a little sound like a snip, the thin cord snapped, and the pendant went flying toward the dark waters of the lake.

“Oh!” Crowley found herself crying out, trying to grab the turquoise before it fell into the water, but it was too late. With a splash, the stone was gone and Crowley dropped the oar, uncertain of whether or not to follow it in before realizing there was no way she could retrieve it. Once it was underwater, it might as well have been in Hell; there was no way for Crowley to bodily enter the water.

“Are you all right?” Asmodeus asked with false earnestness, and Crowley glanced back to see malicious amusement gleaming in the demon’s green eyes.

“I can’t, I’m...” Crowley stared at the water, at the swaying rushes that edged the lake, at a rising flock of birds in the distance as they took to the sky, as if all these things could yield an answer to a question she dared not ask.

“Can’t?” Aziraphale asked, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

Crowley’s voice was barely a whisper. “Can’t retrieve things from the water. I’m an angel.” Crowley said, dazed. “We don’t sink.”

“A shame,” Asmodeus said lightly. “It was quite a fine pendant. A fish of some sort?”

“An upside-down catfish...always looking up at the world above from below...”

“Can’t you row?” A harsh voice interrupted, and Crowley jumped, realizing the boat had stopped right in front of the pharaoh’s pavilion, and the pharoah had stood up from his chair to shout at the women.

“Our stroke has become still, without rowing,” explained the one of the rowers. 

“I can see that! Girl! Yes, you! The one who stopped rowing first! Why aren’t you rowing?”

Crowley blinked as everyone turned to look at her, the girls on the skiff, the officials and attendants of the pharaoh, the priests, the servants, the great lords. Even the birds seem to pause in their chatter.

“Er...that is...lost something valuable?”

“Speak up!” The pharaoh commanded.

“This...fish pendant? Bout this big? Turquoise? On a string? Er...” Crowley blinked, flinching slightly at the many eyes staring at her. “Uh, erm, I uh, lost. A fish pendant of new turquoise. The cord broke and it fell in the water.”

The pharaoh brushed the fine fabric of his klaft headdress back, the simple plain one he wore when he was at leisure, not like the stiff formal nemes. “All this fuss for a hair pendant? Here. You may take one of mine from the treasury.” He pointed to one of his close attendants, a woman who was wearing a fine pendant of gold inlaid with glimmering stripes of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and chalcedony that hung from a twisted braid. The young woman looked down demurely and began to untie it from her hair. 

“Sorry Majesty, but no thank you.”

“What do you mean, no thank you?” The pharaoh sounded peeved.

“I...prefer my own pendant, Majesty. That one is important to me. I’d rather not have a substitute.”

Aziraphale turned and gave Crowley a look of amazement, and Crowley shrugged.

“What, it’s the truth,” Crowley said to Aziraphale.

“That golden pendant is worth ten of the one you lost, at least,” Aziraphale said tartly. “Besides the fact that it belongs to the most powerful man in this part of the world. If you don’t like the one he’s offering, at least take it and sell it to buy a dozen or more pendants of your preference.”

“I’d rather have my own thing.”

“And you won’t continue to row until you get it back?” The pharaoh’s expression changed from irritation to curiosity.

Crowley looked up; she hadn’t realized that pharaoh had been listening in to her conversation with Aziraphale. When she glanced over at Aziraphale, the Prince of Hell was looking a little embarrassed, as the demon had forgotten to mask their conversation from the humans.

“Well, if you really want-” And then Crowley looked around at the other young women. Unlike the Prince of Hell who looked as cool and collected as ever, the young women looked rather bedraggled. Sticky with sweat and splashed with lake water, they were stuck all over with dried bits of algae and duckweed that clung to sun-burnished skin, the kohl around their eyes smeared and runny from rivulets of perspiration. The flowers that some wore in their hair were wilted and dying, wigs were sliding off of lovely heads, and braided hair grew frazzled. Many were starting to sunburn, dark skin growing tender and irritated as the skimpy net dresses provided no protection from the harsh sun. “Actually? Actually, I refuse to row. I won’t continue unless I get my pendant back.”

There was a collective sigh of relief that went through the young women, and they all drew their oars in so that the boat could go no further.

The pharaoh chuckled and waved one of his officials over. “Go and bring me the chief lector priest Djadjaemankh,” he commanded.

Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a look. 

“It seems as though you recognize that name,” Aziraphale said, more of a question than a statement.

“Well. He asked me some rather...personal questions. And shoved me.” Crowley scowled.

“Really now. He laid hands on you?” Aziraphale’s eyes grew cold.

“I think he did for all the young women.”

“He did more than push me,” the woman sitting ahead of Crowley said. “He’s disgusting.” 

“Terrible.”

“Incredibly wealthy.”

“Powerful.” 

“The pharaoh listens to him more than anyone else.”

“We have no say. I don’t even work for the Great House. I was just trying to run errands for my mother in the marketplace and the priests grabbed me and brought me here,” a particularly young girl said, kohled eyes full of tears.

“I wish there was more I could do to help you,” Crowley began, but just then the chief lector priest Djadjaemankh arrived, beckoned over to the pharaoh’s side.

“My dear Asmodeus, I have a suggestion for you...” Aziraphale said, leaning closer to the other Prince of Hell and Crowley startled; this meant that demonic doings were afoot and he needed to be ready to thwart the work of the Adversary.

But instead of overhearing what the two Princes had to say, Crowley was distracted by the pharaoh and the chief lector priest who were both pointing to and looking at her, discussing something that she couldn’t hear. Aziraphale, in the meantime, had finished her discussion with Asmodeus.

“Then we’re in agreement,” Aziraphale said.

“Of course. After all, aren’t we here to sow dissent?” Asmodeus hissed, pleased.

“What are you two-”

And before Crowley could speak, the chief lector priest came to the edge of the water, his hand holding tight to his leopard skin. As he drew closer to the skiff, Crowley noticed that as the priest looked over the inhabitants of the skiff, his eyes became fixed upon Asmodeus, who hissed in a serpent’s voice:

“You will do magic and perform a miracle before all who will witness it.”

Without taking his eyes off of Asmodeus, the chief lector priest Djadjaemankh raised his hands in an attitude of prayer and began to speak, proclaiming that he would perform a miracle in order to retrieve the fish pendant.

A hush fell through the crowd. The pharaoh watched intently, with a child-like curiosity.

The chief lector priest spoke the words of a magic spell, and nothing happened, though the water burbled just a little.

“Watch,” Aziraphale winked.

The chief lector priest spoke the words, again, and the water began to tremble. The girls clung to their oars and each other, and Crowley found herself clinging to the side of the skiff as the water became unsteady.

And for the third time, the chief lector priest spoke the words in a loud, commanding voice, but Crowley didn’t look at him; she looked to Aziraphale and saw Aziraphale’s hand move in a gesture as if drawing something up from below. Suddenly the entirety of water on the other side of the lake lifted up and stacked on top of the side they were on, as if a thick piece of fabric folded in half, though it seemed an invisible dome surrounded the boat and protected its occupants from getting wet. Alarmed, Crowley looked up and around herself. Fish and frogs, insects of all sorts, a diving bird, lily pads and rushes, and even a small crocodile that glided along blithely, not noticing the humans below it. The young women marveled at the sight, crying out to the gods in their surprise.

Crowley’s eyes were bright with amazement. So it was true, she thought, that Aziraphale could make it so that she could see the place where the fish lived herself, without having to go into the water. A warm feeling welled up within her and Crowley found her hand pressed against her breast, in the empty spot where the pendant would have hung.

“Look! I have found the fish-pendant! It lies upon a shard!” The chief lector priest Djadjaemankh shouted, wading into the muck to retrieve it, gleefully snatching it up from the bottom of the lake before wading out again, his entire body splattered with mud, sludge squelching through his bare toes. He ran over and tossed the pendant to Crowley, who caught it despite herself. Later she would wonder; had it been a demonic intervention that landed the pendant so neatly in her hands? Or was it just a good throw? But at the time she was merely grateful for the heat of the love that she could feel within the cold, damp turquoise, the round eyes of the upside-down catfish staring back at her with a curious detached calm.

Djadjaemankh then raised his hands again and said the magic spell, and the water lifted again, unfolding to return its normal place in the lake. 

A great clamor went up, and the ceremonial boating was forgotten as attendants and officials alike swarmed the chief lector priest. Asmodeus gave the command to the other girls; they rowed to the dock immediately and disembarked.

“Go quietly home everyone. The pharaoh won’t need your presence anymore,” Aziraphale said. “And keep the dresses, no one’s going to remember that you’ve been given a fortune in faience and leather cord. Though if I were you, I’d be smart about it and take it apart to hock. All right? Good.”

The young women were too smart to cheer, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. Instead, they smiled and waved, saying their thanks before disappearing into the crowds unnoticed and unmolested. As they left so did Asmodeus, who wandered off into the crowd, appearing briefly by the pharaoh’s side before disappearing altogether.

“Just like that,” Crowley said. She was the last one off the skiff, and she held the pendant tight in her left hand as she stepped lightly onto the dock.

Aziraphale grinned. “Just like that.” 

Crowley watched as the chief lector priest was feted by the court, the pharaoh calling for him to be heaped with lavish gifts, and she scowled. “Men like him always seem to prosper, don’t they? Shouldn’t have been grabbing girls from the marketplace for the pharaoh’s entertainment. Makes you wonder what other mischief he gets up to. Pervert. Creep. Bast-” She shut her mouth and thought for a long moment before changing the subject. “Aziraphale. You know, I never asked what you were here for.” 

“Oh, I can’t tell you why I’m here, Crowley. You know that. Just as you won’t tell me why you’re here.”

“Right.”

“But...” A smug, amused look came over Aziraphale’s face. “Let’s just say that once a man can perform a miracle for a trivial matter, they’ll be expecting him to perform another one when there is a very serious matter. And if he can’t...well, there’s no telling what the other humans will do to such a man.”

“How very diabolical of you,” Crowley said, impressed. “Serves him right.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale smiled. “Say, I think we’re both done for the day now…?”

“About time for supper, maybe?” 

“Oh yes.” Aziraphale said, pleased to see Crowley brightening up. “How about a crisp roasted duck with _nabk_ berry sauce? Oooh, and a good resinated wine.”

“And maybe...” Embarrassed to be caught wanting something for herself, Crowley looked away, busying herself by threading the pendant back onto the cord, and tying the cord about her neck, felt the comfortable weight of the pendant around her neck, the stone warm against her bare skin.

Her hands brushed against her as she finished. Crowley paused, feeling the tightly wound plaits, thinking to take them out, but then with a little shiver, remembered who had braided her hair. 

“Maybe?” Aziraphale was gentle, giving the angel time, but then noticed that Crowley would not say what it was that she wanted. “It’s all right, my dear, you know you needn’t fear asking me for anything. I won’t get mad at you, I promise. After all, the worst I could say is no. But is it soup? Like that soup we had last time that you liked so much, the one with the fish?”

Crowley blushed, wondering how the Prince of Hell had learned her tastes so well. “Yeah, I guess, maybe soup?”

“Oh of course! Of course we can have soup. We can have whatever you want. I always like a good soup. Have you ever tried one with barley…but is something wrong?”

“We can’t go to supper dressed like this,” Crowley said, gesturing to the bead-net dress that barely covered her nudity. “It’ll be a scandal. And I’m not going back to the palace. I’m losing out on a good set of double pipes as it is but I don’t care-”

“Oh right,” Aziraphale laughed. “Almost forgot.” And with a gesture, both were clothed in plain linen sheath gowns, though Aziraphale’s was of a shade far grayer than the one that Crowley wore.

“Am...am I going to get in trouble?” Crowley could hardly breathe, feeling the power of the miracle forming around her.

“My dear, this hardly counts as a miracle,” Aziraphale said, adorning her own hair with dark blue lotuses, handing Crowley a big white lotus that somehow appeared as the Prince of Hell plucked the flowers miraculously out of the air. “These are just the clothes you were wearing earlier.” 

And at that Crowley had nothing to say, but she pressed the flower to her nose, taking in the sweet heady dizzying scent of the lotus as she followed Aziraphale out of the palace grounds and into the vibrant, bustling marketplace just beyond the gates.


	10. The Opposing Sides

Crowley wandered through the clumps of resting soldiers who went about their preparations for battle. He watched with a sense of growing foreboding as bearded and muscle-girt men were sharpening chipped and dented bronze daggers and swords, making arrows, sorting stones for slings, and hardening sharp wooden poles over a fire for makeshift spears. He turned away from the humans on the pretext of inspecting the camp but as he walked, he eyed the forest beyond the warriors with longing.

As he walked through the camp, he focused on the seriousness of his task; it was his duty to carry out the heavenly mandate and by the grace of all that was good and holy he would accomplish it. But to be honest he wasn’t very fond of this particular job. For one, the sound of metal being sharpened hurt his ears, and he wasn’t too fond of listening to all the boasting and rough talk, how many heads had been hacked off, how many foreskins chopped off, how many women and children were carried off…

Ducking out of the war camp, Crowley wandered into the scrubby forest, feet crunching over summer-dried grasses as he made his way down to a burbling stream where the sound of the water covered some of the harsh scraping sounds of edges being ground down. Once Crowley sat down, he took a deep breath and realized how nice it was to get away from the animalian reek of leather and metal and human sweat.

Trailing long fingers through the clear water, Crowley watched his shadow pass over flat smooth stones, little fish darting curious between his fingers, an aquatic snail pausing in its slow progress to peer up at him with calm tendril eyes. It wasn’t a large stream by any means, more like a trickle writ large, but for a moment he wondered what it would be like to actually be in a river or even the ocean, with water moving all about his body, cool and slick, stroking him all over just as the wind did but even more so, and a little shiver passed through him so that he had to take a deep breath and pretend very hard that he hadn’t had those thoughts.

He sighed and forced his mind back on task, wondering if he could do this job correctly and how he could manage it, but then he heard a rustling in the reeds, a sound like soil erupting from the ground, and he looked up.

“You!” Crowley pointed to Aziraphale, who stood on the other side of the stream, watching him curiously. “What are you doing here?”

“Me?” Aziraphale looked genuinely puzzled. “What about you? Why are you here?” 

“I’m here on assignment,” Crowley said, as if it were obvious, which to him it should have been. “Heaven wants me to make sure that the Israelites don’t lose.”

Aziraphale’s expression changed to one of outrage. “And Hell wants me to make sure that the Egyptians don’t lose.”

“Where are they? Erm, your side.” 

Aziraphale gestured behind himself. “Thereish. They’re doing all those human things that they need to do to get ready to fight with weapons.”

“Mine are over there.” Crowley gestured behind himself, waving his fingers almost dismissively. “They’re doing the same. Many loins are being girded today. I’m sure they’ll win.”

“You know I can’t allow that,” Aziraphale said with a cold smile, blue eyes full of dark determination.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow your side to win either,” Crowley said firmly. “It just can’t be allowed.”

“Well, here we are. At an impasse.” Aziraphale sighed. “Wine?”

“Oh yes, please.”


	11. The (Unofficial) Meeting

An angel and a demon sat on opposite sides of a stream, small enough so that they could easily pass the wine jar across to each other without crossing over to one side or another, and it seemed that it was better that way; neither one seemed to feel like gathering up the meager amount of motivation it would take to cross a little trickle of water.

“Should we really be doing this? When we’re supposed to be working?”

“I would call this a meeting,” Aziraphale said, taking a deep drink before handing the jar back to Crowley. 

“Would you officially call this a meeting?”

“I would officially call this an unofficial meeting, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Officially unofficial.” Crowley’s mouth moved into a hint of a smile. “Only you would think of something so...”

“So silly?” Aziraphale wondered.

“So diabolically precise.” Crowley drank and handed the wine jar back. The wine was good, resinous and strong, and feeling the alcohol heating him up through his belly felt good. Crowley suddenly realized that it seemed that a lot of his more fond memories of living on Earth these days involved wine, and pretty much all of those situations also involved a certain Prince of Hell, and that was getting to be a bit distressing to think about so he tried to focus on work again, and unintentionally caught himself in a conundrum of troublesome thoughts.

“Something the matter?” Aziraphale asked, his face showing nothing but an expression of studious casualness.

“No, no. Of course not it’s nothing, I...” Crowley took the wine jar and drank deeply before passing it back. “I just can’t believe that Heaven and Hell sent us both to do the opposite things, that just seems like...like they’re not communicating.”

“Oh trust me, they’re communicating all right. Like it or not, I think they’re setting us up. To see if one of us can triumph over the other.”

Crowley gasped. “Oh no!”

“Oh yes. Playing out the same old wars, but in miniature.” Aziraphale scowled.

“By proxy.”

“Through us in a small part. But mostly through the humans. Who,” Aziraphale paused to take a sip. “Have hard enough lives as it is without us interfering so.”

“Oh, you really think that?” Crowley brightened, taking the jar.

“Really, I do.”

“Because I think about that exact thing a lot.” Crowley drank some more. “We...really shouldn’t interfere so much. Screws with their sense...their sense of-”

“Free will,” Aziraphale said.

“Free will, yes, that’s it, that’s it exactly!” 

“Sending us to micromanage every little detail is rather overkill, don’t you think?”

“We need a lighter touch,” Crowley explained, excited to share thoughts that he had been mulling over for some time now. “Because when we interfere too much, the humans get anxious about doing things the right way and have a hard time making their own choices. They don’t know they can make their own decisions without someone telling them exactly what to do and how to do it every time. And that takes away their ability to make choices for themselves. No one can get anything done if they have an authority breathing down their necks the entire time-”

“Are you sure you’re still talking about the humans?” Aziraphale winked.

“O-of course! Why wouldn’t I be? After all, we don’t have free will.” Embarrassed, Crowley looked away. He felt foolish to have said so much, yet at the same time, he wished he could be more honest and tell Aziraphale directly how he truly felt. But realizing the foolishness of his feelings, he clapped his hand over his mouth, knowing that any more words spoken would tread dangerously into treason.

“Oh yes, of course. Mustn’t forget we have no free will. None of that talk now, it’s dangerous.” Aziraphale’s mouth closed and his lips pursed, faint lines of tension lingering on his face.

“We should go back to work.” Crowley handed the wine jar back to Aziraphale, without having taken a sip. 

“We should,” Aziraphale agreed, without moving.

“Just...need a way for both sides to win.”

“That will be tricky.” With a sigh, Aziraphale stood up, his black robes fluttering about him as the wind picked up. He offered his hand to Crowley, who declined it politely, standing up on his own without help. 

“I’ll do my best. And...you too, Aziraphale. Good luck.” 

“Luck.” Aziraphale managed a smile. But just as he turned to leave, he felt a tug on his robe and he blinked, realizing that Crowley had caught the long sleeve of his black raiment.

“Yes?” Aziraphale perked up.

“Um. Question?” 

“Of course.” Aziraphale gestured graciously for Crowley to speak, and for a moment, Crowley nearly forgot his question, remembering that Aziraphale was a Prince of Hell and he had tugged on the demon’s sleeve as though Aziraphale were an ordinary angel, a fellow chorister of Heaven.

Crowley quickly let go of the edge of Aziraphale’s robe.

“Ah. So um. Just curious. How many? Humans? Are on your side?” Crowley asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Oh, you know. A normal Egyptian army size.” 

“So uh, what constitutes a normal Egyptian army size?” 

Aziraphale shrugged. “Oh I don’t know, about five thousand or so?”

“Five...thousand.”

“Maybe four thousand. I didn’t count. Why do you ask?”

“Oh. Um.”

“Wait, how many humans are on your side?”

Crowley looked away. “They like to say thirty thousand. That’s what they’ve been telling each other-”

“Oh my. That sounds like it will seriously give my side a run for their money-”

“But I don’t think there’s more than a thousand. They’re mostly herders and farmers...their spears aren’t even metal. Just a bunch of pointy sticks really.”

Aziraphale looked alarmed. “It would take a miracle for them to win.”

“That’s where I come in. We’re in the business of miracles,” Crowley said, miserably. 

“What are you going to do then? Hearten them with a flaming sword? Scare off the Egyptians with a visage of fire?” 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “Really, I don’t.”


	12. The Opposing Armies

Crowley returned to find the Israelites girding themselves for war, carefully tying their robes and long tunics about their hips. Some were young and afraid and botching the job badly; scolding fathers or uncles came to their aid, tying off the robes with strong knots so that they wouldn’t come undone and trip them up in battle.

He sat down by a human, a young man, hardly more than a boy, who was wiping away frustrated tears. Arrows were scattered at the boy’s feet, and for some time he was making no effort to pick them up, though a glare from the men around him made him move to reluctantly put them in order.

Though the human could not see him, Crowley hoped that he was good comfort nonetheless, setting his hand gently upon the human’s shoulder, a hand that the human could not have felt or known was there.

“If only my father would listen,” the boy whispered, distraught. He sniffled, blinking back tears and adjusted the leather arm guard that designated him an archer. It was new, so new that the leather was stiff against the boy’s skin, chafing the tender skin of his wrist. 

Crowley sighed. If only. If only someone were listening, he’d bypass the hierarchy and ask the Almighty directly what She would want. But there had been no answer from that highest of authorities, not in a long time, and it made him feel guilty, wondering what he had done wrong. He wondered if he shouldn’t have asked for more from the start instead of trying to do so much on his own. Maybe then the Lord wouldn’t have fallen silent, maybe then the Almighty wouldn’t need to be approached through the domineering Archangels and the imperious Metatron. Maybe if he had been more of what Gabriel said, and what was that word again? Ah yes, proactive. Maybe if he had been more proactive, more obedient, more willing to bend to the will of the Archangels, he-

And then at some unknown signal that Crowley missed, the humans began to get up, to gather, to move en masse, albeit slowly at first as the men were bunched up in clumps. Taking on the guise of an ordinary soldier, Crowley sprang to his feet, hurrying along until he found himself at the head of the group where leaders walked, rugged and hardened men whose jagged scars and cold eyes spoke to experience in battle.

“Say, couldn’t we work this out another way?” Crowley began.

“Who are you? Whose son are you?” A grizzled elder snarled.

“What tribe?” A war chief snapped. 

“Uh...” Crowley blinked.

“What right do you have to be questioning us? The Lord has sent us on this path to defending our homes and families, and we will not fail.”

“Um, just an ordinary son of...erm. Israel. And uh, say! Who might you be?” 

“Enoch, son of Enosh,” the grizzled elder said. “And this is my firstborn son, the war chief Ephraim. Now tell me, young man, he who will not give us his name, what gives you the right to come to us and say that our ways are wrong?”

“Look. I’m not saying anyone is wrong here, I’m just trying to suggest that there could be another way,” Crowley said in a measured and calm voice. “Aren’t there other ways to deal with this?”

“What other ways?” 

The distant thunder of hoofbeats, the shouts of men. The dust cloud that was kicked up by the movement of the distant Egyptian army looked like the spreading edge of a storm, and Crowley shivered, wondering what could be done to prevent this slaughter. 

The Israelites paused, murmuring among themselves. Crowley scowled, knowing that he had to try.

“Look, maybe we should just call it a day and go home? Look at that army down there, it’s huge! Probably got us outnumbered several times over. Besides, if we’re not here to fight, surely they’ll go home too. After all, you can’t have a war without participants and if we all just went home we could-”

“If it were that simple, we would have stayed home,” Enoch’s stern face was grim. “But the Egyptians mean to take us, not just our lands but our people as well. Slaves to grind the grain, slaves to toil in the fields. Season after season they send soldiers further into our lands and to survive we give up good grazing lands. But we cannot keep running forever.”

“Between the Assyrians to the north and the desert to the east, we have nowhere else to run. Our backs are to the wall. Are we to let foreigners reign over us, to have dominion over our wives, our daughters, our sons?” Ephraim interjected. “Heaven promised us victory! We can’t lose, not even to the Egyptian army!”

And the cry went up like a fire, soldiers shouting about Heaven’s promises, and Crowley realized there was little he could do; it would have been like trying to stop surging floodwaters to turn back this mob of men intent on warring.

Cowed, Crowley melted back into the crowd of soldiers. It was an unstoppable tide of humanity driven by the need to protect their homes, and he had to figure out a way to stop this. As they marched down to the plain, a bedraggled group with no particular discipline or formation unlike the Egyptians holding their places on the great plain before them, Crowley wondered how hearts so hardened to battle could be turned to brotherhood, and could see no way about it, not from the Israelite side.

Unfolding great white wings, he launched himself into the air, and flew toward the Egyptian line.

Crowley flew quickly toward the Egyptian camp, alert and on edge. It would not do to be seen here, especially now that he knew that the Opposition was backing the Egyptians. But it was worth a try, he thought. Changing the hearts of men, after all, could perhaps stem the tide of war. Only this time, Crowley would not go in without a plan.

The Egyptian camp was tidy and orderly, with everything and everyone in its place. As Crowley circled the camp, he saw that the main camp far from the immediate battlefield where servants and slaves tended cook fires, ground grain, and made bread from the resultant flour. While the food smelled good and reminded him that he could eat, he knew his responsibilities and instead landed closer to the bulk of the army, where the soldiers were carefully positioned based on complicated hierarchies and every man among them tended to armaments that looked all the same, made to order for the army in vast industrial quantities. The first thing Crowley noticed was that Egyptian scouts had not noticed the distant approach of the Israelites yet, so the men were still going about the work of preparation, tending to their bronze-tipped spears, harnessing prancing horses to chariots, tying and retying the belts that cinched their short linen _shendyt_ kilts about their waists.

Pausing in the shade of the ornately decorated royal pavilion, set up to keep the intense heat of the sun off of whoever was in charge of this army, Crowley took a careful look at his surroundings, considering his strategy. From where he stood, he could see some young potentate, a prince perhaps, or even the pharaoh himself, being dressed by his servants in a tinkling leather coat sewn all over with painted scales made from bone, readying himself for war, his spear and his sword belt leaning against a finely carved wooden chair inlaid with ebony. 

Crowley was about to leave, but then he heard a strident, impatient voice call out:

“Out! Out! Go, depart! Leave me to myself, I’ll finish this alone,” the young potentate snarled.

“Yes, yes Prince Amenmesse!” Quickly, the servants dropped what they were doing and left the prince to secure the last few ties on his armour by himself.

“A lot of trouble just to keep the Nine Bows from organizing enough to bring trouble to our own lands. After all, the days of the Hyksos are long past,” Amenmesse snarled, muttering to himself as he sat down on the chair. “If only my father, he of the sedge and bee, were here to fight in his own war. Or even my older brother Seti, the king’s son himself. Crown Prince Seti, too important to be bothered with leading the army. Well, I am a king’s son too! Whatever happened to the glorious wars of our forefather, Ramesses, justified? That pharaoh fought with his own strong arms and rode in his own chariot with his charioteer, driving away the Nine Bows. And it happened in those days past that all the king’s sons, every single one old enough to lift a sword went to battle as well to fight at their father’s side, and the gods rewarded them with victories and long life. Instead of fighting with my father and brothers at my side, I alone must to do all the work of war and they take all the credit for my victories.” 

Crowley felt a little jolt of hope, of excitement thinking that this might be the way to stop the war. He was just about to step forward when he paused, remembering that he had another strategy already. It was tempting to try changing the mind of a prince, but recent experience showed him that war leaders would not be amenable to listening to the advice of some unknown, especially right before battle. Shaking his head, Crowley walked away as the prince shouted for his charioteer. He looked around at the soldiers again. His original plan would have to suffice. Between one step and the next, Crowley took on the appearance of an ordinary soldier. Spear leaning casually against his shoulder, he walked up to a group of young men who were doing their best to stay unnoticed by their aristocratic officers.

“How do you do, fellow soldiers,” Crowley began, a polite smile upon his lips. “My, how lovely are your faces! Say, don’t you think that this is all a silly waste of time? After all, Egypt is so much better in every way. These miserable foreign lands full of miserable foreigners are not worth taking over. But you know what’s absolutely the worst?”

And here, Crowley paused to build up suspense, waiting until every person’s attention was fixed upon him. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “Well boys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but word has it that if we die here, we will not be buried properly with the correct rites of our people. Our flesh will be eaten by jackals and pecked at by vultures. Hyenas will gnaw on our bones. They’re just going to let us rot where we lie.”

Crowley concealed a smile, feeling very clever for touching upon some very sensitive topics that he knew these Egyptians would react to, and waited for the uproar of indignation, expecting that the rumors would spread through the army and cause it to turn back.

The men looked round at each other, and then burst into raucous laughter.

“I’m serious!” Crowley protested. “Hyenas! They, they get gnawing with those big pointy teeth and then...crack! They’ll eat your bones and swallow the bits and there’ll be nothing left but-”

“Death?” One young man roared with laughter. “You think some stinking foreigner of the Nine Bows is going to cut me down? They probably don’t even have metal swords, even in this modern day and age.” 

“Sticks and rocks, that’s all they know how to fight with. If they even know how to fight at all.”

“Wretched Nine Bows don’t even have bread and beer like real civilized people, all they eat is whatever they can find growing out of the ground.”

“I say let them take their punishment from the great Pharaoh Merneptah, who comes bearing order and right.”

“Who has time to die? I have a wife and kids at home to feed, you think I can die when there are mouths as hungry as locusts wanting back home?”

“Obviously our army is superior. If we weren’t, why would we always win against the Nine Bows?”

“Why indeed,” Crowley muttered, slipping out of the crowd of humans, who let him pass unnoticed. He looked up at the sky and with a sigh, posed his question to a higher power. “Are the Egyptians truly the unstoppable force they seem to be? Are the Israelites really promised total victory by Heaven? How can both be true?”

There was no answer forthcoming. In fact, not only was there no answer, there had not been an answer in a very long time. Crowley looked around, wondering if he could spot Aziraphale in this mess. But then a scout ran back to camp with news of the coming Israelites so Crowley took to the air. There was nothing more he could do.


	13. The Observers

“Fancy meeting you here,” Aziraphale’s black wings cast a dark miasmic shadow upon the ground that no human could see, but had one stepped into the shade of those black wings, they would have shivered uncontrollably until they walked away, beyond its demonic influence. And even then they would continue to shiver, just a little, at the memory of that strange shadow that was not a shadow.

“Yeah. Fancy meeting you too,” Crowley muttered, his white feathers stirred by the force of an updraft that did not affect him. His hair rose up around him like a crimson cloud, and then settled around himself as he chose not to let the wind ruffle his hair. Crowley cleared his throat. “Come to watch the slaughter?”

“Oh of course. Certainly,” Aziraphale said, but there was something about the way he looked away that made Crowley wonder what the demon was thinking. “Mustn’t forget that whole Prince of Hell thing, got to enjoy the bloodshed and the maiming and all the accounting of the souls, this way and that...just wonderful, isn’t it, all the mechanics of-”

“Wait.” Crowley stared in amazement, his mouth open with shock. “You’re really not into this, are you?”

“Of...of course I am. How dare you insinuate otherwise?” 

“You really don’t want a war, do you?”

“No, of course I do, it’s obviously the right thing to do. The wrong thing, that is,” Aziraphale said, with more than a hint of nervousness that grew as he spoke. “Absolutely the baddest of bad things. Got to do the wrong thing, that’s what we’re supposed to do-”

“Oh my goodness,” Crowley laughed. “Is it possible that-”

“Don’t say it,” Aziraphale scowled, and for a brief moment Crowley thought that he should be afraid, but then again he had known Aziraphale too long to be that afraid of him.

“Do you even want a war between Heaven and Hell?” Crowley asked, guilelessly.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Aziraphale said stiffly, before correcting himself: “By which I mean, of course I am all for the Great Plan. Everyone agrees on the Great Plan. We have agreed upon the Great Plan for ages. Why would we be here but for the Great Plan? After all, there wouldn’t be that fierce struggle between Good and Evil that rages through existence without the Great Plan, right? By which I mean--”

“Actually, I’m not sure I believe in it,” Crowley said suddenly. “And maybe I deserve to be punished for saying so but it’s the truth."

Immediately, Crowley regretted his words. He had given the Prince of Hell too much leverage over him, but then he realized that it had been a few thousand years since the creation of the world, and never had the Prince of Hell used any of the accumulated leverage against Crowley that he had, whether it was saving Crowley from being discorporated (far more than once) or listening to Crowley’s complaints against his Heavenly supervisors (even more than far more than once). And Crowley wondered; did this mean that Aziraphale was even still gathering more weapons to use against him, or could Crowley actually, well, trust him?

And it made Crowley gasp with surprise, realizing that he had been trusting the Prince of Hell all along, and so far that trust was not to be broken. He was so surprised that he had forgotten he was flying, and felt himself begin to plummet as his wings lost lift on the thermal that he had been soaring upon.

"Crowley! Are you all right?” Catching Crowley around the waist, Aziraphale steadied the angel until Crowley was aloft again, his wings catching a current of air that unexpectedly burst forth in strength so that both angel and demon briefly twirled about each other as a strong updraft forced them high into the atmosphere.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Of course I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?” Crowley drew away, embarrassed, afraid that someone might have seen them so close together.

Aziraphale’s expression changed, and he withdrew politely. “Of course. Well, these air currents get rather tricky up here, don’t they? Shall we go see how the battle is doing?”

“Yes, let’s,” Crowley said with a sigh. There was not much else they could do but watch, standing witness to the slaughter.

Below them, the two armies were gearing up to fight, horns blaring and drums beating a relentless beat. Crops were trampled in their wake, and here and there throughout the great plain, the last of the people who lived upon this fertile land ran, carrying their children and their goods, leading their animals away, hoping to make it to the hills before either army closed in on them.

“Humans,” Aziraphale said, in a tone tinted with contempt. “Humans and their petty wars.” 

“They’re only doing what they’ve been taught,” Crowley said, a little too carelessly. “After all, that was intentional.”

“What? What do you mean, what they were taught? How is this intentional?”

“Oh shit.” And here, Crowley found himself coloring again, embarrassed to be caught out once more. “Shit. I shouldn’t have said shit. Never you mind, it’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Aziraphale arched a knowing eyebrow at the angel. “Hmm. Nothing, you say?”

“Nothing. Other than...uh, well. Oh, I shouldn’t tell you but. Um, promise you won’t say anything. You promise? All right. There’s this thing about a sword...a flaming one. The humans were given it intentionally by an angel, a Cherubim. Not one I know personally, I think he works in Marketing. Or Human Resources. Anyway. The sword is a harbinger of War. It gives life to their conflicts, fueling their wars. That first murder? You know, with the sons? The two brothers? That was with that sword too. It’s been at the center of conflict, since the beginning. We’ll probably see it here soon. It’s never far from a battlefield,” Crowley said, despondent. 

“My dear angel, I appreciate your concern for discretion but you must know that I’ve known about this for ages now, since the creation of humankind.” Aziraphale said sadly. “We get reports about the humans too. Giving the humans the Sword of War is no secret. Perhaps an open secret in the lower ranks but not among management. In fact, the Dark Council and the Assembly of Heaven met together to make this arrangement. Both sides even agreed upon which Cherubim would be sent to do the dirty work of delivering the sword. There is no mystery to this tale; only administration.”

“Oh...”

“Really. If you can believe it, I was against it because it sounded to me like the free will these poor creatures possess would have led them to do the work of the killing for us, even without our interference. But the others wanted certainty that the Great Plan would proceed on Earth as it is in Heaven and Hell.”

“But...” Crowley puzzled it over. “They don’t have our duality.”

“No. They are not mirror images of each other, one bright, one dark. They are their own thing. Themselves, entirely.”

“Why would Heaven and Hell agree to such...such nonsense?” Crowley winced, realizing the danger in what he had said.

“Perhaps it is because it is the only nonsense we know,” Aziraphale continued, unperturbed, waving off Crowley’s blatant display of disloyalty with an absent gesture. “Powerful factions exist on both sides, factions that have their own agendas to push. After all, the War in Heaven never really ended, not for either side.” Aziraphale’s eyes gleamed briefly with infernal flames or perhaps it was just the angle of the bright summer sun, but that flame disappeared as quickly as it came. 

“Maybe not. There’s nothing anyone can do about that. But if I can stop this war, I will.” Crowley scowled, and with a swooping turn in the air, he flew down toward the battlefield to see what he could do.

Shaking his head, Aziraphale hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to follow Crowley, before turning and flying away.


	14. The War

By now the two armies were marching toward each other, the voices of the men raised in a howling, bloodthirsty chorus. The men with their horses, chariots, friends and allies came rushing toward each other, trampling through the fields, muddying clear streams, cutting deep ruts and footprints through the soft, fertile earth, crushing the green of growing grain. Seconds to spare, Crowley knew that if he didn’t do something, there would be blood shed in immeasurable quantities, and as he skidded to a halt above the battlefield, he felt his wind-whipped robes tangling about his legs.

And that gave him an idea.

With a quick gesture, belts and girded loins undid themselves, and men began to stumble, tripping in the fields over the ends of long robes or kilts that slipped down off their hips to tangle their ankles. Even the charioteers had to haul their horses to a stop as they paused to draw up their fallen kilts, mortifying nudity exposed for all the world to see.

And then once the first man was back up on his feet, splashed with mud and ready to fight, it happened again; his robe ungirded itself from his loins and he could no longer run to fight. 

Over and over, the clothes girding the men’s loins refused to stay tied up. Elite Egyptians in their chariots were trying to hide their shameful, slave-like nakedness from each other, ordinary footsoldiers were hauling wet and muddy kilts around their waists, trying to keep the knots together before their elite officers whose kilts were equally wet and muddy, sagging around their ankles. On the other side, Israelites were wringing their soggy, splattered robes and trying to knot soggy woolens that somehow were too slippery to tie up, the men trying to wade out of what had turned into churned mud pits with clothes dripping wet, too heavy to fight in. Even their sword belts and quivers sagged, as if those armaments were dragging the men further down into the mire.

With a sigh, Crowley felt his entire body melt in relief. He flew in long, slow circles until his feet touched the ground on a hill overlooking the battlefield. He folded his wings away and fell back onto a miraculously soft patch of grass. Turning all the clothes unruly was a trivial miracle, nothing that would get anyone’s attention unless they were watching closely. With a huff of relief, he laid down under the dappled shade of a fruit tree, its unripe fruit swaying in the air above his head.

So much for War, he thought, until she appeared before him. 

Clothed in a long crimson tunic bordered with a darker red that was nearly black, the color of dead roses or perhaps of dried blood, she stepped forward, the short black cloak pinned around her shoulders swirling about her like smoke. Her sword was unsheathed, hefted over one shoulder, cold flames licking at her without actually touching her.

Crowley recognized the clothing. “You’re here from another war, aren’t you? Is it in Crete? Ionia? Who’s fighting?”

“That is no concern of yours, little angel. Tell me, what was that all about?” War asked, pointing to the battlefield.

“What was what all about?” Crowley quickly got up on his feet. Though he was taller than her by quite a bit, he found something overwhelming about her; she carried herself with a presence and authority that reminded him of the demeanor of an Archangel.

“All that tripping and stopping. Do you know what’s going on?”

Crowley shrugged. “Not really. Been here for a while, just taking a break, if you must know. Letting the humans get to their war. We don’t interfere,” he said with a bright smile that he hoped she wouldn’t notice was absolutely insincere.

“Are you sure?” War looked puzzled. “Because I have orders and my orders say that there is to be a war today. And it doesn’t look like a war out there at all. Where is the blood? Where is the screaming of the wounded and dying?”

As War spoke, Crowley realized that the longer he kept War distracted, the less time War had to be at war. And thus he calculated that a few minutes of his time made War’s time even less valuable.

“Oh, no?” Crowley made a big show out of peering over at the battlefield, where men were still struggling with their kilts and robes. “Oh, are you sure it wasn’t meant to be a sartorial war? Seems like they’re going at it pretty hard, trying to fix all those belts and knots. Rather looks like a massacre to me, what with all those mud stains. They’ll be cleaning those clothes for weeks at this rate. The rivers will run brown with dirt. Women and children will wail at the sight of these ground-in stains. The earth itself will echo with the lamentations of the launderers. Hopefully no one will catch a chill from all that wet.”

“Angels,” War said with a harrumph of contempt. “Always so soft-hearted, except when they’re not.”

“But weren’t you an angel once too?” Crowley asked boldly.

“That was a long time ago.” War smiled, a cold and emotionless expression etched with an innate cruelty that sent a little shiver through Crowley despite himself. “And I am no longer what I was once before. If I ever was that.”

“Oh, I didn’t know, I thought-”

“Does it matter what you think? What matters is War. If this isn’t your doing, angel, then what’s going on?”

Crowley took a moment to compose himself before he leaned in conspiratorially. “Could be the Opposition. Never know what they’re up to. Seems to me it might be some infernal plot to distract us from a proper war. Then again, it might just be bad luck. A bad sheep harvest one season and then all the clothes the next season will tangle and misbehave. Oh, or maybe they had bad luck shearing the flax; flax tends to get unruly and run about wild if not sheared properly. Slippery lot that stuff is, maybe some of those clothes were just made too slippery in the first place. Materials are important. I know, I’ve paid attention to humans and their works.”

“I’m not sure that sounds right...”

“Oh, but what do I know, I’m just an angel, and we don’t, you know, muck about too deeply in human affairs.” 

“Well, if nobody is taking responsibility for this war, then I had better get this party started and be on my way. There is more important work today than this little battlefield. Great cities to burn, men put to the sword, children and women enslaved…” Blood welled in War’s eyes like tears, and she blinked away the red haze. Crowley’s mouth tightened as he watched, confused by the mismatch of War’s words and expression. “Ah, so much wondrous work to do today and no time to enjoy these little maneuvers with such greater pleasures promised elsewhere.” A drop of blood slid down her face and she raised her sword over her head.

“Are you all right?” Crowley asked, concerned. “You seem to be erm...crying.”

“I am War and nothing else.” War brushed away the blood, pointing the fiery weapon at the battlefield.

“What are you doing?” Crowley asked, alarmed and trying desperately not to show his distress.

“Oh, just getting the fun restarted. After this, they won’t worry if they’re naked or not. The dead and dying no longer care about modesty or mud.” War laughed, a dark, sensuous sound deep in her throat, and where she pointed, a young man, the boy that Crowley had seen earlier, the archer with the new wristguard, stumbled up onto his feet. Though his distant figure was caked in mud, he bent down to pick up a fallen arrow that was miraculously untouched by the muck. Nocking it, his motions jerking as if a wooden toy pulled by strings, he let fly the arrow into the Egyptian ranks.

Time seemed for a moment to pause, to still, as Crowley’s eye followed the trajectory of the arrow. The arrow sailed through the air and landed right in the middle of the Egyptian line, piercing the breast of Prince Amenmesse who had been leading the charge. The prince gave a cry and collapsed against the side of his chariot. A moment later, all hell broke loose as the Egyptian army roared for vengeance.

“There now, that wasn’t hard, was it?” War beamed. “Have fun with your war, angel.” But when Crowley turned around to speak to War again, she was gone, as if she had never been there, even as she had always been.

Heart pounding, Crowley leapt forward with a loud cry. 

“No!”


	15. The Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for injury, blood.

And then it stopped. In fact, everything stopped.

With a gasp, Crowley looked around at the world. Above, the carrion-eaters hovered motionless in the air, black crows and ravens, wide-winged buzzards and vultures, all recognizing the commotion of warfare and gathering in advance of the coming feast. Even the clouds above them were still, little white puffs of dampness that seemed to be frozen in the sky.

Grasses and tall cereal plants were bent in the direction of a wind that no longer blew. Myrtle flowers, with their tender petals blown loose seemed to lean in perpetual yearning toward those lost scraps of white. And as he looked around, Crowley marveled at the silence of the still world, without the sound of wind or birds or any living being.

As he walked toward the battlefield, he saw insects suspended in mid-air with lace-like wings stopped mid-flight, droplets of muddied water that sparkled like gemstones that had been kicked up by soldiers, men with their mouths open and frozen in cries of shock and anger. Here, a man was still trying to tie his robes up around his hips; there another man had lifted his spear but whatever had happened that made everything stop had left him standing as though a statue, muscles tensed in a moment frozen in time.

Crowley made his way to the royal chariot, picking over the wet and muddy ground, his sandaled feet barely touching the surface of the watery mess, and to his surprise, the young Egyptian prince was clutching at his chest, gasping with pain from the arrow that had pierced his breast.

That was odd, Crowley thought, that this human was somehow spared when everything else had frozen.

“Goodness, angel, that was a bad idea, wasn’t it? Pretending to be their prince.” Prince Amenmesse coughed up a gout of blood and tried to stand back up.

“Oh...oh no!” Crowley gasped. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Quickly he clambered up to the narrow platform of the chariot, but realizing he couldn’t get onto it because of the charioteer, stayed where he was behind the chariot, drawing Aziraphale into his arms.

“Good guess.” Aziraphale smiled up at him weakly, mouth slick with blood as he let go of the illusion that had made him appear as an Egyptian prince, slowly reverting to his own self as easily as if slipping out of a coat. As he changed back to himself, the blood that poured from his wound slowly changed color, from brilliant red to a strange deep blue hue. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

Crowley placed his hand over the wound, careful not to jolt the arrow, feeling hot blood spurt against his palm. “What were you doing? I thought you left-”

“I thought I left too but...” Aziraphale shrugged and immediately regretted the motion, wincing with pain. “Seems like I just couldn’t stay away.”

“What am I supposed to do with you? I can’t leave you here like this! I have to heal you.”

“Don’t. You’ll get in trouble,” Aziraphale coughed weakly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Crowley shivered, wondering what Heaven would think if they found out that he had healed a Prince of Hell, but then he realized something; if time was stopped, no one could possibly be watching.

A little frisson of excitement went through him, and Crowley felt as if a surge of power overcame him, like a desert gale kicked up into an engulfing sandstorm.

“It’s fine,” Aziraphale whispered. “Truly, I’ll be fine. Just...just give me a moment to breathe-”

“No, I can do this. Shhh...don’t move.” Crowley half-closed his eyes, closing his other hand lightly around the arrow. With a swift motion, he drew the arrow out and at the same time, felt the glowing heat of the miracle pass through him into Aziraphale, healing the Prince of Hell.

“You didn’t have to,” Aziraphale smiled sadly, indigo bloodstains nearly invisible against the black of his robes. 

“I think I did,” Crowley said, his voice soft and quiet, the blood disappearing from his hands as he tossed the arrow aside. “After all, uh, it would have been very…um. Erm. Inconvenient. Yes, it would be very inconvenient for me if you weren’t here.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale gave him a cautious, curious look.

“Of course what I meant was that if you had been discorporated by accident, you would probably be disciplined. And I’m not sure I can manage handling another one of your other colleagues as the Representative on Earth while that was going on. You’re already hard enough to work with as is.”

“Oh, yes. That. Certainly.” Aziraphale’s expression was carefully neutral. “No, I mean, you didn’t have to heal me. It only pierced one of my hearts,” Aziraphale explained. “So while it was a painful annoyance, it wouldn’t have been fatal.”

“Wait, did you say one? Of your hearts?” Crowley pressed his hand against his own chest, feeling the beat of a singular heart. “You were issued with more than one?”

“Lord of the Octopuses,” Aziraphale said, as if that would explain everything. Aziraphale straightened his robes as he stood up, the bloodstains disappearing from his clothes. Looking about at the shadows that the stopped clouds and birds above their heads cast over the field, at the frozen carnage around him, of bloodthirsty men ready to fight yet trapped in a moment of time, the Prince of Hell seemed impressed. “Oh badness, was this you?”

“I guess?” Crowley flushed, embarrassed.

“How did you manage this? I didn’t know such a thing was possible. This isn’t a power that I’ve ever heard of, not in all my existence.”

“I don’t know,” Crowley was mortified. “I just wanted everything to stop, and it did.”

“And yet, it did not touch me. I wonder why,” Aziraphale wondered out loud.

“Dunno,” Crowley mumbled. “Just...stopped everything and I don’t know how to turn it back and it’s just stuck like this and what if it’s like this forever...”

“Yes, well. Wouldn’t that be a problem,” Aziraphale muttered to himself.

“Wait. Would it? Um. Be a problem?” And then Crowley turned to Aziraphale, golden eyes gleaming. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could stay like this forever? Just you and me...”


	16. The Paradise

“Just you and me. In a paradise of our own making, a creation where nothing else matters but us. And it would go on like this forever and we would never again have to worry about war in Heaven or on Earth...and it would just be this lovely peaceful quiet that could go on and on.” Aziraphale’s mouth moved into the semblance of a smile, but his eyes were full of an unspoken sadness.

“Yes, that’s it exactly! Just like that. We could have it all, couldn’t we? It would be like our own Garden of Eden. If...if I just let this be.”

“But if time’s stopped, what if we wanted night?” Aziraphale asked very reasonably, pointing to the sun. “It would always be stuck at this hour of the day.” 

“T-then we fly to the other side of the world where it’s night, and once we get tired of night, we fly back here.”

“But what about wind and waves and-”

“A lot of nonsense motion and troublesome during flight. You saw how I nearly fell out of the sky earlier. And besides, I can’t even go underwater, I wouldn’t be losing out on anything in particular.”

“Hmm. All right then, what about food?”

“What about food? That’s just...gross matter. Material contamination. We don’t need to eat. I mean, I like eating, but we’d get along just fine without it! Though...I suppose I would miss wine.”

“And what about...” Aziraphale pointed to the humans, trapped in time as if insects in amber. “What about them?”

“What about them?”

“What if...this harms them?”

“Oh, good point,” Crowley said, scowling. “Or us. It could harm us as well. The others, our kindred. Do you think this would harm angels and demons?” 

“As if we have a reason to care about the others,” Aziraphale said, with a scornful note of contempt in his voice. “Other demons are merely competition in the same boring game, and the Opposition-”

“I’m the Opposition too,” Crowley said in a small voice.

“Right.” Aziraphale’s expression changed, losing that hard edge of irritation and anger. “I had almost forgotten. Certainly I don’t think of you as one of them; I have made an exception for you. After all, you’re not like that boring staid lot, always on about the rules and fine customer service and all that nonsense. But do you really think we should have Creation like this? Just to ourselves, with no one else allowed to experience it, other than as background decoration to our existence?”

“No, you’re right.” Crowley sighed, dejected. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted, but the weight of responsibility fell over his shoulders as stifling and suffocating as high humidity on a hot day. “Fine, I’ll return it the way it was. World’s hardly worth living in without a good cup of wine anyhow.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said simply. 

Turning away from Aziraphale, Crowley looked around at the still world, imagining the universe in its infinite variety frozen like this, the motion of the planets paused; the birth, death, and rebirth of stars halted forever. Existence sealed into one moment of time for eternity, with no wars and no death, but no birth and no peace either. But most importantly, no choice in the matter for all beings throughout Creation.

Which made all of Creation like an ersatz Heaven or Hell, or maybe both simultaneously, and at the realization, Crowley felt a sharp sickening pain inside his body; had he really loved Heaven so much that he wanted all of Creation to experience its everlasting, unchanging stasis? When being Representative on an everchanging Earth had been the best thing to happen to him in his existence?

A prayer slipped past his lips, and he closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the deep calm that prayer always sent through him. And when he opened his eyes again, he knew he was ready to do what needed to be done.

Something that he did had caused this, it should be easy enough for him to undo it. It wasn’t a miracle – had it been a miracle that would have been easy to negate. He could have done it himself or he could have asked Aziraphale. But this was something else entirely, something he had never heard of nor known about and for a moment a sickening feeling went through him; what if everything really was stuck like this forever and all of existence would suffer for it and here he was without even the guiding light of the Almighty to offer him succor and direct his actions. 

Crowley shook off the dark thought. Or at least tried to, because once the worry appeared it lingered in his mind, clinging to his thoughts and feelings like a whispering mote of darkness that could not be banished, not even with the brightest light. 

Taking a deep breath, he decided that if nothing, he was going to do his best to try. Because God didn’t create a quitter. 

“A-all right. All right. Okay. Yes, I’m ready. And now I want things to un-stop.” 

Crowley raised his arms.


	17. The Embrace

Nothing happened.

Crowley walked around and waved his arms. 

Nothing happened.

Unfurling and spreading his wings, Crowley gestured with a grand, sweeping gesture of authority, a motion that was meant to negate anything that he had done.

Nothing happened.

“Care for a little help?” Aziraphale looked at him curiously, wondering what all this was meant to accomplish.

“I’m not sure how you could help?” Crowley paced, frustrated, folding his wings away. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Perhaps if you could start by telling me how this started? There could be some sort of clue that could help us figure out how this power works.”

“Um. All right. Uh, so. Certain...things happened on the battlefield, and I stopped to watch it from a hill. That one, over there.” Crowley pointed.

Aziraphale nodded patiently, gesturing for him to continue.

“And uh, well then War came and-” 

“War? Really?”

“In the flesh.”

“Then there must be a vested interest in this battle and it wasn’t just a trifling skirmish,” Aziraphale murmured to himself. “Please, do go on.”

“Right. We talked a little, and it was making me upset, and...and well, she pointed her sword and got that poor young Israelite to shoot his arrow at the Egyptian prince and then I was very upset and I yelled ‘Stop’ and then everything stopped-”

“Ah.” 

“Ah?”

“Perhaps, and I might add that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but perhaps in this particular instance correlation does imply causation? In that, perhaps somehow it is tied to your emotional state. Or the physical state of your body that has been affected by your emotional state?”

“I...I don’t understand.”

Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand, and led him away from the chariot. Behind them, the actual Egyptian prince now appeared; he had apparently been disguised as the charioteer. The prince was unhurt, though his expression was dazed, somewhat stupefied. 

An angel and a demon walked across the muddy battlefield together, hand in hand. Crowley stepped lightly on the surface of the puddles of water. Aziraphale however sank into the wet mud as he walked, but the demon remained untouched by the wet slimy muck. Soon, they were back in the dappled shade of the fruit trees on top of the hill overlooking the battlefield.

And then Crowley realized that Aziraphale was holding his hand and had been holding his hand this entire time. Aziraphale was warm and his grip was firm without being overwhelming and their fingers seemed to fit together just so, interlaced perfectly...and Crowley could feel the edge of panic rise in him.

“Something that you’re doing...is slowing time for me,” Aziraphale said his words sounding careful and deliberate, though that was not of his doing, the sound of his voice lengthening and deepening as time slowed down around him. “And unless you stop it, I fear the time around me may be stopped as well.” 

“I don’t know how to stop it!”

“Here.” Aziraphale drew Crowley close against his chest, so that Crowley could feel the heat of the Prince of Hell’s body, the silken brush of his black robes against Crowley’s face, and when Crowley turned his head to look away from the demon, overwhelmed, the press of his ear against Aziraphale’s chest let him hear the slightly asynchronous polyrhythmic beat of three hearts, never for a moment beating in tandem. 

Crowley took a deep breath, taking in the peppery, almost spicy scent of lavender that clung to Aziraphale, and another, sweeter, distantly familiar scent. He took another deep breath, feeling almost lightheaded when he realized that it was the scent of the sea. 

It was the scent of a cool ocean breeze at night, bringing with it an obscuring fog that left prickles of dampness all over the word in tiny drops of condensation, shrouding the world in a soft blurry haze. He had never before noticed that Aziraphale had a scent, and then realized there was only one other time he had been so close to the fallen angel, and that was ages ago when the world was still new.

Time stood still. Crowley’s eyes half-closed, and it seemed to him that the world was no more than the scent of lavender and the sea, the brush of silk against the bare moments of exposed skin, and the sound of these beating hearts. The warmth of arms around him, the awkward press of his own lanky limbs against Aziraphale, and then he shifted a little, tentatively putting his own arms around the Prince of Hell so that they fitted together as neatly as their hands had interlaced.

There was a calm to it, a peace that he had not known in a long time and in fact it made him wonder, had he ever known such warmth and tranquility? Not alone, not by himself; this was a lesson, he thought, that he could have never learned on his own.

And then without warning, the world came back. The wind fluttered, the birds called to each other, and the men of the battlefield roared their displeasure as their clothes continued to stymie them.

In the distance, where neither angel or demon had time to notice, an Egyptian prince on his chariot looked puzzled as his men called out to him in horror, before the men themselves stopped what they were doing, gasping with surprise at the apparent health and untouched state of the prince, their readied weapons dropping lax from their hands.

Crowley gasped, pulling away so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own robes. 

Aziraphale’s expression was calm, showing nothing in particular, and it made Crowley wonder for a moment if all that had been real, until he caught Aziraphale straightening his mussed robes.

“Well. I suppose we should do something about that?” Aziraphale pointed back to the battlefield.

“Yes, yes of course. We need to do something. Something must be done. Er, um, the mud and water. Was that your doing?” 

“Oh, certainly I can’t tell you if it was me or just a coincidence,” Aziraphale winked. “Just as I’m sure that you had nothing to do with the clothing fiasco. Now, what should we do?”

“Get them to call it a draw, I think. Environmental reasons. Gods were against it, etcetera.”

“Yes, but I rather think they would start fighting again once we leave. And somehow I doubt we can stay here as long as it would take for them to permanently stop. If not this season, then the next season of war, that’s how these humans work.”

“I have an idea,” Crowley said. “We want them to forge a lasting peace, right? I don’t want to come back here and try this again. I don’t think it would work twice. You’re right, they won’t give up the fight just because they were thwarted once. If they don’t hash it out now, by next summer they’ll have different fighting clothes with straps and whatever happened with those slippery clothes won’t happen again. Or fancy shoes that can wade better through mud. Humans always have ideas, they’re too clever for their own good. So let’s make them sit down and work things out. Talk about it, instead of fighting. Set up some borders with rocks and call this Israelite territory and the other side can be Egyptian. And both sides will agree to stay on their own side of the border. Perhaps they can give each other gifts to make the agreements stick. Oh, I like that idea. I think I shall call it, _diplomacy_.”

“Hmph, borders and talking. I suppose that could work. Won’t last forever, but long enough to let people live their lives without constantly stabbing each other or bashing in each other’s heads,” Aziraphale nodded. “Rather elegant way of dealing with war if you ask me, waging war with one’s words instead of one’s arms. Of course, there is one problem: the Egyptians have a pharaoh at home waiting for the news of the outcome of this battle, and the Israelites have their own families and people and high priests wanting to know what happened.”

“You’re right. That’s a potential problem waiting to happen.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the salient details of the report can be...amended?”

“You’re not suggesting...lying, are you?” Crowley was aghast.

“Oh of course not. Really,” Aziraphale said. “I’m not suggesting lying at all. But! If a good outcome is reported, would that really hurt anyone? Like a gentle exaggeration of the events, with an emphasis on the victorious Egyptian army and its smiting of foreign foes. Or an emphasis on the victorious Israelite army and its God-given triumphs?” 

“You’re right. What a diabolically clever idea.” Crowley was impressed. “But seems like it needs a name.”

“Hmm, yes. These things always need names, don’t they? Else you can’t take credit for it in reports to head office. Oh, I know. I shall call it _propaganda_.”

“Sounds like a name that will stick. And how long do you think this will take? To work through all this diplomacy and propaganda.”

“As long as necessary. We’ll have to supervise the proceedings, I should think.”

Aziraphale offered Crowley his hand, and the angel hesitated, his hand reaching out before remembering where he was and who might be watching. He shook his head, in an almost imperceptible motion, the faint touch of a sad smile upon his face.

Aziraphale curtly nodded his understanding, and continued speaking as if nothing was amiss, straightening the blue-lined sleeves of his long black robes. “So. In the meantime, let’s get this all cleared up and cleaned up. The quicker we get done with this, the sooner we can go get ourselves a jar of wine and some cheese and fruit. Oh, it’s not fig season yet, is it?”

“Oh yes, it’s about that time of year. Figs, grapes, fresh dates...pomegranates.”

“Mmm, those would all go well with some nice soft cheese. I always like a good salty cheese to go with that fruit. Oh, and perhaps some fresh flatbread and butter. Hot off the oven. Though I do quite enjoy the ones cooked on a hot stone. The bread that is, not the butter.” 

“Hot bread with fresh cheese is one of my favorite things. As is hot bread with new cheese, hot bread with aged cheese and fruit, hot bread with honey and butter, hot bread by itself, hot bread with olive oil or sesame oil, hot bread with soup…”

“And a cup of good white wine to wash it down...”


	18. The Papyrus

‘Dear Dr. Fell,

‘Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that your submission to Journal of the British Research Center in Egypt has been accepted. Yet again, the historic archives of the Library of A. Z. Fell, your esteemed ancestor, has yielded up yet another ancient treasure and it is our privilege to be the first to publish the translated manuscript. 

‘Included is a copy of the typeset translation for your approval. Please review it and reply by April 1, 1990 so that we can include it in next quarter’s publication.

'Text of translation:

_Live the Horus: The Mighty Bull, Appearing in Thebes, Making the Two Lands to Live… … … Son of Re … High in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands Ba-en-ra Meriamen, son of Ra, Merenptah-Hetephermaat the increaser of power, raising the victorious sword of Horus-Ra …_

_… His Majesty commanded a campaign of victory which his majesty made to extend the frontiers of Egypt in valor, in victory, in power, and in justification…_

_~~The battle commenced upon the land that our scouts had selected, but the ground was as wet as the Nile. The mud was as deep as a spear(?) in some places and the chariots were stuck as much as the men were stuck, unable to move more than…~~ _

_… there was fighting in the land which is south of … that wretched enemy has come to meet our…_

_~~… As for the Nine Bows, the knots of their skirts kept slipping out and the long cloth tangled their legs. We who are more civilized were not spared indignity(?); our kilts kept slipping off our hips and tangling at our feet. And thus the battle (was fought), without a (single) blow, as our rebellious clothes finished the war for us.~~ _

_The good god, potent with his arm, heroic and valiant, rich in captives … he caused to retreat the foreigners(?)…_

_~~Before our very eyes the Prince Amenmesse, he who is the king’s son, escaped grievous injury from the arrow shot by a (foreigner), the only arrow(?) that was fired in the entire…~~ _

_Now the princes of this foreign country came on their bellies to kiss the ground to the glory of his majesty and to beg …_

_~~Ignore the crossed out parts, we have fired(?) that scribe and replaced him with someone whose hand (writes true). What follows is the writing of the new scribe whose hand writes true: The important thing is that we who were victorious made a mountain of corpses of our enemies, a mountain of the captured armour and weapons; a mountain of captives totaling one thousand men and women and children; a mountain of cattle, goats, and (sheep) totaling ten thousand; and a mountain of costly vessels and objects of stone, gold, silver, and copper totaling one hundred deben. But just as we had made these five mountains of victory, a strong storm blew in and with it, the wind-blown sand. Seeking shelter, we waited for the storm to subside but it blew for seven days and seven nights. When the storm went away, everything was gone and there was nothing left.~~ _

_~~We're pretty sure it means the gods accepted our offerings of a corpse mountain and an armour and weapons mountain and a slave mountain and a cattle, goats, and sheep mountain and a costly object mountain, so we went home, victorious, having lost not a single man to injury or death, other than Seneb the archer who stubbed his toe on a chariot wheel. Without much else to do but celebrate our victories, we headed home. Chief Scribe(?) … says to write down that during the storm we lost three thousand sacks of wheat, some horses, an ebony chair and one fine golden vessel that was in the possession of the prince. But we bring home some commemorative cattle, goats, and sheep totaling one thousand that we found after the storm. Also some very nice silver vessels and some good cedar furniture that your majesty …~~ _

_**Actually we won**. [Translator’s note: the original text here is underlined and circled in red ink.]_

‘Dr. Fell, we are very pleased to inform you that alongside the Westcar Papyrus and the Rhind Papyrus, the Actually We Won Papyrus will be known throughout history as one of the great finds of ancient Egyptian texts. Besides that, the Actually We Won Papyrus will be famous as the second-known example of Egyptian war propaganda, after the documentation from the Battle of Kadesh...’

“Bother,” Aziraphale muttered, as he stopped reading out loud. He adjusted his glasses very angrily. “Second? And here I thought I had invented propaganda!”

“Looks like the humans beat you to it,” Crowley shrugged. “At least I can still claim diplomacy.”

“Actually, if you read the rest of the letter, it goes into some depth on the diplomacy initiated around the Battle of Kadesh.”

“So I don’t even get that?” Crowley was offended. “All that work and the humans beat me to it?”

“By about 66 years. But you still got to claim it on your report to head office, that’s all that matters as far as we’re concerned.”

“...head office won’t like it when they find out I didn’t actually-”

“What did I tell you about telling the truth?” Aziraphale said tartly. “In fact, what did you yourself say about reports to head office?”

“That everyone stretches the truth a bit in reports to head office?”

“There, that’s a good angel. Now, let’s forget all about that ugliness while I draft a reply to these lovely gentlemen. Tea?”

“Please.”


	19. The Formal Introduction

Crowley was, as usual, a little early. Heaven did not take kindly to recalcitrant angels, and so he looked around, waiting for Aziraphale. The rules were very clear; as Representatives on Earth, neither of them could leave Earth without the other one also leaving at the same time in order to maintain the balance of Heavenly and Hellish influences on reality. Perhaps it would be different if he had a substitute, but Heaven had entrusted this responsibility to him alone and so Crowley fretted a bit, wondering if Aziraphale would be late and thus make him late to his own meetings. 

Trying to distract himself from his worries, he watched the boats coming ashore. Fishermen were sailing into harbor, their boats heaped with piles of dead and dying fish. Above them, chattering, thieving gulls followed in their wake, fighting amongst themselves as they scrambled for discards. Already, hungry humans and cats alike were pacing impatiently on the sandy shore, waiting to meet their benefactors.

He sighed. It was always interesting to go look at what the fisherman caught, what kind of creatures that they brought out from the mysterious depths, but he had no time today. He turned away and looked back at the ladder, contemplating his divine responsibilities.

While there were ladders all over the world to ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell, the official ladder, wider and broader than all the other ladders, was both everywhere and nowhere at once, though for some reason it always took some traveling to get to it. Probably something that was meant to build character, Crowley thought, and he straightened himself up from a dejected slouch as Aziraphale appeared before him, fussing over the artful pleated draping of his black chiton, which was embroidered with a deep blue border of stylized geometric waves. A gleaming golden octopus shining bright pinned a black himation to the Prince of Hell’s shoulder, and it seemed as if the creature was emerging from the deep ocean depths. 

“I see you’re reporting back to head office too,” Crowley said, making polite small talk even though he knew that Aziraphale probably knew more about what would happen today than he did. 

“Something like that,” Aziraphale said, glancing up. “Rather important meeting today. Try to look surprised, all right?”

“Surprised?” Puzzled, Crowley did not know how to reply. “Surprised about what?”

“Erm, well then. Let’s go, must smite the thigh while we can, get moving, etcetera.” Aziraphale said briskly, grabbing one side of the broad ladder. “After you.”

“Um, does it matter? We’re going to different places, we can use the ladder both at once like usual-”

“Actually, we’re going to the same place for a change this time. Oh, don’t look so surprised, save that for later at the meeting. Just because it doesn’t happen often doesn’t mean that I don’t go to meetings in Heaven. After all, if you recall, we met previously in Heaven.”

“You mean before the Fall?”

Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed. “I meant, sometime after the creation of the Earth. As I recall, you were trying to get a flaming sword.”

“Oh. Oh! Oh that. I had forgotten about that.” 

“It was a long time ago. After you.” Aziraphale gestured, but the angel hesitated.

“T-the ladder, it’s erm uh, big. Big enough for both of us? Why don’t we go-”

“Together? Marvelous suggestion.”

Crowley glanced back down at the distant Earth one last time before taking a deep breath. The last step into Heaven blurred away the rest of Creation, and he looked around at the forest of gleaming limestone columns and white marble halls, the long endless corridors of the veritable citadel that Heaven represented. It wasn’t always like this, he thought; it used to be more formless, but as time passed and Earth changed, it seemed that even Heaven changed with it.

But the soft celestial harmonies were still the same, and clear bright light and the sweeping stars above had not changed. Even the puffs of white clouds that drifted by were still the same as they had always been and would always be.

“We see that you are finally here, Princze Azzziraphale,” a stern voice buzzed as echoing footsteps drew closer, and Crowley realized that this diminutive figure must be the First Prince of Hell, Beelzebub. The First Prince was attired with utmost formality and grandeur, wearing a crown of horns made of meteoric iron and a necklace of jeweled flies over a formal robe so intensely black that it seemed to repel the light. Beside the First Prince of Hell was Asmodeus, the Second Prince of Hell, crowned similarly, as well as some other lower-ranked demons that Crowley did not recognize. Some of those other demons seemed like the type that never left Hell for very long, crusted over with sores and scabs just as angels who rarely left Heaven gleamed with gold.

“Yes, here I am, on time as always,” Aziraphale said lightly, though Crowley could tell that he was uncomfortable. “No dawdling in any sense of the word, none at all. Say, I see you’ve brought Duke Hastur and Duke Ligur as per the memo. Excellent. Cr- that is, erm, uh, fellow Representative of the Opposition, I suppose you’ll want a little introduction. Yes, of course, introductions are in order! Ahem. Proper introductions, of course. Brother Princes and Dukes of Hell, this is Heaven’s Representative on Earth. Now Hastur here serves Beelzebub and Ligur here serves Asmodeus. Oh! And, and of course, can’t forget my, my own Duke, Legion, who acts as my second in command in Hell...heh, would forget my own head...erm uh...”

Legion bowed, a beautiful demon with dark eyes framed in long curling lashes, a polished and charming creature that made Crowley feel drab and ungainly in contrast. “A pleasure, Representative on Earth.” Hair twisted up like two tall horns and carrying a wax tablet, the Duke came to stand by Aziraphale’s side, an elegant figure beside a formidable one. Immediately Crowley shied away from the delegation of Hell.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley with a lingering look but then immediately looked away as Beelzebub began to scold the lower-ranked Prince.

“You are not ready for thiz meeting, you wear not your regalia and you come not prepared...”

Crowley beat a hasty retreat, glancing back long enough to see Aziraphale’s mouth tighten as he gestured, changing into the formal attire of a Prince of Hell, the blue-lined black robes, the crown of meteoric iron laying heavy on his head.

It had been a long time since he had seen Aziraphale like this, and it made Crowley’s mouth go dry. Of course Aziraphale was a Prince of Hell; that had never changed. And yet somehow over time, it seemed like it was easy to forget that very important detail, especially when Aziraphale did no more than wear a little ring of a crown that signified his status, and leaned lazily on the supper couch chatting about one thing or another, before sitting up to refill Crowley’s cup.

Crowley resolved not to forget, but almost immediately, the thought slipped his mind again when he wondered where they would go to eat after the meeting; perhaps some fried fish would be good...and then he had a momentary panic when he tried to remember if he had changed before coming to Heaven. Quickly, he looked down at what he was wearing.

Crowley patted his celestial robes with relief, glad that he had remembered to change before coming to Heaven. Angels were not allowed to bring material objects from Earth onto celestial plane and anything material that was brought to Heaven would be destroyed. He thought of his fish pendant and frowned imagining someone in the Powers taking a particular pleasure in destroying something that he loved, just because it was material. 

“Finally a moment alone,” a familiar, deep voice purred. “Did Aziraphale tell you?”

Crowley swallowed, backing up as he realized he had walked right into the path of Asmodeus.


	20. The Gates of Heaven

“T-tell me what?” Crowley’s mouth moved into the shape of a smile without meaning to, more of a grimace than anything friendly.

“Either nothing, or that the two of you are playing a deeper game than I expected.” Asmodeus reached out to touch a strand of Crowley’s hair, and afraid of causing a commotion in Heaven, Crowley stood trembling, not wanting anyone to notice.

“Beautiful. It’s like touching fire. Radiant, in the glory of God. As an angel should be. Not like we who are Fallen, who lurk in the gloom of the underworld.” Asmodeus let go of him, mouth twisted in a smirking smile. 

“If you don’t have anything to say...” Crowley began, impatient and uncomfortable.

“That’s actually why I wanted a moment with you, Representative on Earth. There is talk amongst management that there may be a replacement for your counterpart. Seems your good friend has done such a good job that he might be commended for his efforts...with a recall back to his throne in Hell.”

“He’s not my friend,” Crowley said reflexively. “I don’t know him like that.”

“Oh, what a shame. Because it seems that someone should be your friend. Rather lonely isn’t it? A solitary angel on Earth, a shining star lost among the dull clay of mortals. Of course, once he’s recalled, there will be another skirmish to fight for the job of Representative on Earth, but this time I doubt anyone will stand in my way. Then, maybe you and I...”

The light got brighter, and Crowley shivered once more. That meant that the Archangels had arrived with their Cherubim, who like the Dukes of Hell served as lieutenants to the Archangels, though unlike the Dukes of Hell, the Cherubim followed behind the Archangels at a respectable distance, cognizant of their lower status.

“I suppose you had better return to your delegation, Second Prince of Hell,” Crowley said, staring Asmodeus down. “It wouldn’t be proper to be seen fraternizing with the Opposition.”

Asmodeus scowled. “You should ask him yourself why he didn’t tell you anything.” And the Second Prince of Hell stepped away, rejoining his delegation as if nothing had happened.

“Gabriel, Michael, Uriel...how, how are you doing- uh that is erm, how um pleasant it is to see you all again,” Crowley beamed as the Archangels drew close, putting on his best customer service face and attitude. Wanting to look at Aziraphale, as if that could puzzle out Asmodeus’ cryptic words, Crowley instead focused on the problem at hand, the delegation from Heaven. He glanced at the Cherubim, thankful that they were too far away to properly greet; he only recognized one and wasn’t sure how to address the others.

“Very good, Crowley. Glad you could make it,” Gabriel said affably, patting Crowley on the shoulder in a manner that set Crowley’s teeth on edge. “Is the delegation from Hell ready?”

“Uh, O Most Holy Archangel-” Crowley began.

“Yes, they’re all here,” Michael said briskly, gesturing for the Cherubim who carried the wax tablet to step forward. “They’re ready for us.”

“All right, let’s get to this meeting. Remember the terms we discussed in the Assembly of Heaven,” Gabriel said. “We need to-”

“Wait,” Uriel said. “ _He’s_ still here.”

“So he is,” Michael said, peeved. “Did you have permission to listen in, angel?”

“Let me handle this, Michael.” Gabriel beamed at Crowley with an insincere patronizing cheeriness. “Go wait outside. Let the important angels handle this. There’s a good angel, don’t go too far now, all right?” Gabriel chuckled as the delegation of Archangels and Cherubim walked away, their footsteps echoing through the empty hallways of Heaven.

Not knowing if what he felt was relief or insult, Crowley stepped outside.

From here, Earth was no bigger than a gleaming blue pearl set among the jewels of the stars. Crowley sat on a cloud just beyond the gates of Heaven, looking up at gleaming white statue of a five-legged lion that stood at the gates. He had seen this type of statue before on Earth, monumental and imposing, but there was something cold and unfeeling about this particular sculpture, a likeness that was copied from human hands by celestial hands that understood no emotion beyond eternal perfection.

“That’s rather odd,” he said to himself. When had they put up this lion? Why did Heaven now have a gate that looked suspiciously like that new inner city gate in Babylon that was so much talked about? Why did Heaven look like the inside of an Egyptian temple, but without an Egyptian temple’s dark mysterious gloomy grandeur? It troubled Crowley; for eons beyond measure Heaven had been the same, but now it was somehow different. Time was timeless in Heaven, or at least time should be timeless in Heaven. This was supposed to be a place where nothing changed and everything was always as it was. Except, Crowley puzzled, things had changed in Heaven. 

“Maybe...” he muttered to himself, but then realized he had no answer. He decided that he would ask Aziraphale what Hell looked like now and if it was different now compared to before Creation. Heaven’s change should mean that Hell had also changed, and then he realized that there were other things he had to ask Aziraphale and a little jolt of anxiety gripped his stomach and-

“Angel Crowley,” a solemn voice intoned. Recognizing this as the voice of Sariel, the Cherubim who served Gabriel directly, Crowley was on his feet immediately, straightening his robes, making certain that he looked impeccable.

“Y-yes?”

“You’re wanted inside,” the Cherubim smiled, a cold and meaningless expression that reminded Crowley too much of Gabriel. 

“O-of course.”


	21. The Meeting in Heaven

Just as Aziraphale had suggested, Crowley tried to appear properly surprised when he walked in to see the Archangels meeting with the Princes of Hell in a big empty expanse between rows of columns that lined the walls of the room. But no one seemed to notice him; he was an afterthought that stood near the Heavenly delegation quietly as the others hashed out their issues.

Crowley watched the meeting for a long time; it seemed that he had been called before they had needed him. And so he watched as Cherubim and Dukes of Hell who had been designated Project Managers gave long dry presentations on their projects; wars, famines, plagues, earthquakes, storms...all manner of disasters that impacted humanity were discussed in cold detail. It did not matter at all that people suffered, that people died or were injured or maimed. What mattered most to these celestial bureaucrats was scrabbling over the numbers, the tallies of souls that were marked for Heaven or Hell.

Crowley wondered where the souls went. He had never seen one himself.

Lower-ranked angels and demons moved among the delegations, handing out small wax tablets with accounting information that was checked over greedily by the management of both Heaven and Hell. Archangels and Princes of Hell argued back and forth about the subject of individual souls and their designations; should a philanthropist who stole a dried date be marked for Heaven for his conduct or Hell for that same conduct? What about a hard worker who drank and dallied with women? Did intention matter or was it just the act or the outcome that made it good or evil?

Crowley stifled a yawn with a deep breath, and commenced his old trick of getting through long, interminable meetings: half-dozing while nodding at intervals, to give the appearance of being alert and attentive.

It was a good trick until it didn’t work, and Crowley’s eyes snapped open fully when he heard his name being called.

“Y-yes?” Crowley stepped forward.

The delegation of Hell stood to one side, and the delegation of Heaven stood to the other, and between the two delegations was Crowley, eyeing both with curiosity.

With a polite tilt of his head, Aziraphale walked over to stand beside Crowley on his left.

“As I was saying,” Aziraphale said primly, but in that way that Crowley recognized as combative, “As Representative on Earth, I expect that where I go to execute my evil wiles, the Representative on Earth for Heaven goes as well to thwart me at every turn.”

“And you want us to grant this angel the power to go underwater?” Gabriel sounded skeptical.

“Angels don’t go underwater,” Michael protested. “It’s...un-celestial.”

Asmodeus rolled his eyes.

“We’ve heard your protestationzz,” Beelzebub snapped. “Again and again, and yet we have already made the agreement. Just becauze your Representative is here doezz not mean we muzzt go over thiz tired argument once more.”

“Well, I suppose I could go and look for Leviathan myself without any interference from Heaven,” Aziraphale shrugged. “Could be fun once we receive our venerable Brother Leviathan, the Third Prince of Hell back into our ranks. How many Archangels do you have on your side again? I mean, excluding the ones you can’t find. Just the four? Leviathan would make us five Princes of Hell with Belias-”

“Of course we’ll abide by our agreements,” Gabriel said agreeably. “Now, what was your plan for finding Leviathan?”

“Yezz, tell us of your plan, Lord Aziraphale.”

“Oh, it will be a long search beneath the ocean, could be quite a while. More ocean than land to search, and he could be anywhere. He shouldn’t be too hard to find though.”

“How do you know that?” Uriel asked.

“Duke Legion, would you be so kind as to fetch the model?” Aziraphale made a gracious gesture, and the Duke of Hell known as Legion seemed to suddenly blur and split into three separate demons who stepped away briefly and came back, hauling a massive scroll of papyrus that had been drawn all over it with squiggles that represented the Earth and all its environs. The demons began unrolling it just partway, setting it up upon a table that appeared miraculously before them, a table that grew as the large sheet of papyrus was spread out over it. Both delegations began to step back, in order to accommodate the growing table and the papyrus upon it.

“Now, here we have both representatives to scale,” Aziraphale raised his voice in order to be heard. By now, Aziraphale and Crowley were standing far away from both delegations. The table had grown so large that they had to move and Crowley found himself at Aziraphale’s side, looking at the distant figures of the Archangels and the Princes of Hell. “We will start by searching the Pacific,” Aziraphale continued, nodding to Legion, at least, one of the Legions, who produced two diminutive figures and set them upon the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, mostly blank but for the outlines of some islands and atolls. Crowley had to lean in to look, and there he was in miniature, with his wings and his robe and a harp in hand.

Crowley swallowed; the figures looked so small, lost among the empty expanse of what was called Ocean.

“Seems like a daunting task,” Gabriel said loudly from the other side of the room.

“Oh, it won’t be so hard once you see what kind of a task this will be...the model Leviathan please, Duke Legion.”

Legion bowed...all three of them, and they split once more so that another three stepped out of the room to fetch the model while the original three held onto the partially unrolled papyrus. This time the other three Legions returned with a massive sculpture of a sea beast, carried by two while the third one directed their obscured view.

“Careful, careful! Two spans to the right! No, not my right, your right!” Legion called out to Legion, as Legion and Legion groaned under the weight of the massive sculpture, several cubits high and even more cubits long. 

The demon Duke(s) hefted the gleaming black sculpture onto the table where it settled with a metallic clunk. A monstrous multitude of glowing red eyes made of rubies glittered in the bright light of Heaven. Both delegations walked over to take a closer look at the model Leviathan, and the angels recoiled when they realized its grotesque horror, faces contorted in disgust.

Crowley’s eyes widened. As the Duke(s) of Hell had set down the sculpture, both tiny models of the Representatives on Earth had been crushed under it, forgotten. He could see little black and white wings sticking out from beneath the foot (or would that be tentacle?) of the great beast that was the Third Prince of Hell.

Actually, he decided, it was perhaps something more like a toe...or a little nub of callous sticking to the edge of a toe, or no wait a minute, perhaps that really was a tentacle, the black on black carving made it hard to tell even in the bright light of Heaven, which then logically would make that the edge of the tiniest sucker? Or some kind of fin or flipper?

“’I am one of the meanest creatures that inhabit the sea. I am three hundred miles in length, and enter this day into the jaws of the Leviathan,’” Gabriel read the banner that hung from the sculpture’s massive curling horns out loud. “Well, that is...a thing.”

“Yes, rather. Leviathan was the head of Marketing,” Aziraphale explained. “Quite good at it, if you must know. After all, even the humans know about Leviathan.”

“Eh, good point,” Crowley nodded, and then closed his mouth realizing he had spoken without meaning to. Wincing, he did his best to look meek and obedient as Michael glared daggers at him.

“Our Brother is vast,” Beelzebub intoned. “But he will only be found if he wantz to be found.”

“This is preposterous,” Michael complained, voice strident. “This is utterly a Health and Safety issue. First of all, no angel should be going underwater, and secondly, no angel should be fighting two Princes of Hell-” 

“And you’re the ones who wouldn’t give me a flaming sword. Where was all this talk about Health and Safety then? I asked for a flaming sword and you gave me this stupid whistle that has been absolutely of no use. And what, you really think this is my first time thwarting two Princes of Hell at once? Have any of you even been reading my reports? I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to deal with both Aziraphale and Asmodeus. And another thing, about my celestial wages. Lately I found out that they haven’t been adjusted for inflation or cost of living and that they’re barely the minimum-” Now of course, Crowley was not a complete idiot. He didn’t say these words, but he thought them very, very hard, and in the direction of the Archangels.

“There isn’t going to be any fighting,” Aziraphale said, trying to placate the Archangel. “Though if you would rather send someone of equal standing to a Prince of Hell, I will understand. I’m certain one of you will gladly agree to go underwater with me. It would be an excellent opportunity to discuss business matters.” The corner of his mouth moved in a hint of a smile, just for the briefest of moments and Crowley recognized this for what it was; a bluff.

The Archangels looked at each other and then looked at Crowley before turning back to each other.

Gabriel gestured, and the Archangels crowded around each other for a moment, speaking in hushed tones that could not be discerned. Their discussion was brief; soon enough they straightened up and all looked obediently to Gabriel for his ruling.

“Crowley will be fine. After all, he’s been Representative on Earth since the beginning and has plenty of experience navigating the world. I’m sure he’ll find a way through the entire ocean safely, what with a Prince of Hell guaranteeing his safety.”

“I cannot guarantee the safety of anyone who has been sent to try to thwart me,” Aziraphale said with a cold, toothy smile. 

Crowley tensed and forced himself to not look at Aziraphale, wondering what if there was any sincerity to his words, knowing that there were probably some hidden meanings to this that he could not immediately unravel at this time.

“Then it’s settled!” Gabriel beamed. “We will agree to grant our Representative some more powers so he can safely go underwater-”

“Then it muzzt be that our Representative will be granted an equal amount of additional powerz!”

All around the room angels and demons seemed to droop a little bit, This meeting was starting to look like it would go on interminably until the foretold end of the world, Crowley thought. Or at least a few years in which time his feet would get very tired from standing, his eyes would get very tired from appearing bright-eyed and attentive, but mostly his mouth would be very sad from having that earnest I-am-a-good-angel-paying-attention-smile forced upon him. 

“My Lord Beelzebub, I doubt that I could be granted even more powers,” Aziraphale began, but Beelzebub cut him off. 

“An equal amount to that which iz given to your Representative shall be given to ourzz. We shall commence the search soon. It is a waste of all of our time to sit around in meetingz forever.”

“Are you saying-” Michael began, but Gabriel caught the Archangels eye, at which point Michael retreated.

“Very good. Our people will work out the details of the powers, and in the meantime, I suppose we should send our- yes, Crowley? Did you have a question?”

“Wouldn’t it...” Crowley blinked, realizing all eyes were upon him. “Erm uh, that is, wouldn’t it make more sense if he didn’t know I was there thwarting him?”

“Crowley,” Gabriel said indulgently, with a tone of gentle exasperation, “Of course it would, but then everything would be so... _messy_ if we didn’t know what the outcome would be. The world...” Gabriel gestured widely. “Is a big place with lots of humans to manage. We need certainty that that our projects are properly managed. Leave these big decisions to us, you’ll continue with the thwarting and keep up the good work. We can count on you, right?”

“R-right.”


	22. The Tropics

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Aziraphale smiled.

Crowley looked around. The ladder had left them on the firm damp sand on some unknown shore, but this was somewhere tropical, an island perhaps. He took a deep breath, taking in the fresh salty scent of seawater and a hint of some unknown flowers, basking in the heat. Above, swaying palm trees were set against an impossibly blue sky, and the deep green leaves of tropical trees rustled in the warm humid breeze. The water here was clear, so clear that darting fish and other aquatic creatures were clearly visible and Crowley wanted to stop time now, so that they could stay like this forever. 

But so far, he had never been able to stop time again, and even when it happened he had no idea how it worked or how he had done it.

“Yeah.” 

Crowley had of course been to the ocean before, but there was something about the prospect of going into the ocean that sent a sharp current of adrenaline through him that left him trembling with excitement. He had never thought that he would see where the fish dwelt, but for that moment years ago when he had witnessed a demonic intervention that moved and stacked up lake water so that he could see the fish within. But this was something else entirely, the idea that he would bodily go into the water.

“Well?” Aziraphale’s voice drew him out of his reverie. “Done staring at the water? I’m in no hurry, but eventually the sun is going to set.”

“Oh. Oh!” Crowley blinked. “Yes, of course.” And as Aziraphale stepped into the surf, Crowley strode forth by his side, onto the water, without sinking into it.

“My dear angel...” Aziraphale began. 

“Sorry. Force of habit.” Crowley focused, remembering his newly granted powers and found himself sinking into the water with a little squeak.

“What was that?”

“N-nothing.” The water was warm, so warm it made the skin of his bare feet tingle and he realized that he had never noticed how cold Heaven was. Brilliant with light, gleaming with white marble and limestone that was utterly icy underfoot, and he was so accustomed to it that the numbing cold of the stone seemed to never touch him. But here, the soft sand beneath his feet gave with every step so that he sank a bit, as if the earth itself wanted to embrace him, and warm water swirled around his ankles and calves in a strangely pleasant manner that left him weak at the knees.

“Are you all right?” Aziraphale asked, in a kind and solicitous manner, and Crowley nodded, blushing furiously, embarrassed to be caught out like this.

“Just...taking a moment to...” And as Crowley stepped further into the water and the lapping tide stroked him all over his body, he shivered with pleasure at the changing currents that slipped around him, more sensuous than air could ever be, and he wondered; was this why angels were normally not allowed within the water? That it was an experience too hedonistic for any ordinary angel to endure? No wonder no Archangel wanted to go beneath the waves, it felt like tantamount to asking to Fall.

Just then a big wave reached up and nearly dragged him under, but for Aziraphale’s steadying arm. 

“Careful,” Aziraphale chuckled. “The ocean has its own mind and rhythm, never turn your back on it.”

“R-right.” And despite the shivering pleasure that he felt from the water, Crowley remembered what he was supposed to be doing; thwarting the Adversary (or at least, the Adversary’s representative). “Of course. So erm. About these new powers...”

“Oh yes. Well, of course you can now go into the water, but you’ll also need to breathe underwater, and be able to control your buoyancy so that you don’t merely float up to the surface. You’ll have protection against pressure and coming up from pressure. And your eyesight will adjust so that you can see clearly. Hearing and speech will be modified too, so that we can communicate. Oh, and of course, the light and color correction; without it things are not as colorful as they would appear to be. The light filtered through the ocean tends to tint everything blue.”

“Actually...” Crowley took a breath. “I was asking about yours. Since your um...since the negotiation gave you some new powers too, didn’t it? But they made me leave before I heard any details.”

“Oh, nothing serious. Just some ability to travel faster, that’s all. It’s rather impressive, but there’s no need to use it. Yet. I’ll take you around with it someday, I promise.” 

“Sure. And I’ll be sure to...” Crowley paused, not certain what he could offer a Prince of Hell, if anything. He glanced at Aziraphale who looked at him curiously but did not press the matter. “I’ll be sure to appreciate it,” Crowley said, feeling his words trivial and inadequate. 

“You do plenty enough for me without having to do things,” Aziraphale said. And afraid to ask what that meant, Crowley stayed silent.

A few steps more and Crowley found himself completely underwater. Looking up, he could see the coiling waves break above his head, and the further he walked, the more peaceful the water became, until the rushing tide seemed like a distant memory.

Hair floating around him in a crimson cloud, tiny fish darted up to inspect the strange phenomenon, hiding amidst his hair as he walked and Crowley understood why the Lord of the Octopuses kept his hair cropped short.

“Deep breaths, my dear. You’re holding your breath and so tensed up I’m surprised you haven’t shattered.”

“Oh.” And Crowley realized his voice sounded different here, strangely muffled, though Aziraphale’s sounded the same. Exerting his new powers, Crowley took a deep breath and was surprised to find himself feeling a bit calmer, a bit less nervous.

“Work on relaxing your body. The water will hold you up, you needn’t support yourself nearly as much as you would on land. It’s a bit like outer space in that way, though there’s still some gravity here. I suppose it’s like being on a large asteroid or comet. Or a dwarf planet.”

And Crowley closed his eyes, letting go of the thought of fighting gravity, and found that despite not trying, he was still upright, swaying gently with the movement of the current.

“There, isn’t that better?” 

“Yeah.”


	23. The Infernal Will

Together, they crossed lush meadows of tender seagrasses that stroked invitingly along Crowley’s bare legs and feet, so unlike the grasses of land that scratched and sliced bare skin. Fish darted past them, disturbed by their presence while above, beyond the waves flights of birds passed overhead, leaving their shadows to skim across the sandy bottom. There was so much to see that Crowley could not help but marvel at sights he could never have imagined to exist. Massive reefs buzzing with unusual sounds, teeming with color and life. Corals of all shapes and colors growing in profusion like strange stony plants, the gentle swaying of sponges and the wriggling petals of nearly transparent anemones. Schools of fish swam by them without ever seeming to noticing them. The multitudes were of all sizes; tiny fish barely visible to the naked eye, massive fish that dwarfed humans, heavily-armoured crustaceans that peeped out from under rocks, brilliantly colored shrimp and sea slugs, and even the occasional cephalopod that came by to inspect Aziraphale before disappearing off into the shelter of a crevice.

A large shadow passed by overhead, and when Crowley looked up, he saw the gentle placid passing of a massive manta ray. In his heart he felt a jolt of affection for these creatures that he had never seen alive or in their own habitations. So much lived here under the surface of the obscuring ocean that he never knew existed, and he vowed that he would use these newly acquired powers to do his best for them too.

The light that filtered down from the surface flickered and faded with the movement of the water and Crowley found himself standing at times fully mesmerized, as if unable to look away from the beauty of a branching coral, or a strange armour-plated seahorse that briefly wrapped its tail around his pointing outstretched finger like a ring, or the goings-on of a little hermit crab that made its life scurrying about the ocean floor. 

A small roundish creature darted out, vivid red, and Crowley watched as it swam over to inspect him, to flit through the cloud of his crimson hair that floated around his head in a halo, to look at him with big round eyes before doing the same to Aziraphale. Short curling tentacles waggled at them; unlike other octopuses most of its tentacles were webbed and part of its body; it looked a bit like a round flatbread that had bubbled in the center while cooking.

“Is this some kind of octopus?” Crowley asked. It didn’t look like any kind of octopus that he recognized, though he also recognized that he had not seen that many octopuses to begin with.

“Oh yes.”

“One of yours?” 

“Hmm. Oddly enough, no.” Aziraphale reached out to the octopus, whose stubby tentacles wrapped briefly around his index finger before letting go. “This one is their own octopus.”

“I thought you were the Lord of the Octopuses. You’re telling me you don’t control them?”

“I could. Well, I did, a long time ago, and for some time. But these days I’d rather not. After all, that would be interfering with their free will. I’d rather they be their own octopuses than mine. I suppose these new generations must be their own octopuses.”

“Oh. I think I understand?”

“But. Even if I wanted to,” Aziraphale said, “I don’t think I could influence that one. It truly is its own creature. Curious.”

“Is that the case then, with all the animals under a Prince of Hell’s dominion? Like, does Beelzebub control all the flies? And does Asmodeus control all the serpents?”

“I wouldn’t know. But if it’s anything like me, they at least have influence. But it’s not like I could spy on you via octopuses. More like...the ones near me may be bent easier to my will than a human would, for example.”

“You...bend octopuses and humans to your infernal will?” Crowley gasped, and then realized that the gasp was not so much of a gasp as a gurgle.

“Sometimes.” Aziraphale shrugged. “What, don’t look at me like that.”

“Your...infernal...carnal will?”

Aziraphale turned as red as the little octopus that had visited them. “O-of course not! How could you think that I- It’s not like I would...I would never do carnal things with humans or octopuses! Never! Bending others to your will is something that can’t be helped. We radiate our own influence and sometimes if I’m very...well, that is to say, focused on a task, humans naturally um...”

“Naturally what now? Do I want to know?”

“Badness, Crowley! It’s not like that! I don’t know what you think demons do but...it’s much more innocuous than it sounds. And stop calling it my infernal will, it’s just...you know, my demonic influence. The way it works is...well, they find that they will answer the questions I want them to answer, or perhaps get out of my way when I want them out of my way. That sort of thing.” Aziraphale said, flustered, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Demonic influence can be just as effective as demonic interference.”

“Do all us...”

“No, not that I know of,” Aziraphale said. “Though I suppose your Archangels have similar powers. And other Princes of Hell. But no, ordinary angels or demons don’t seem to have this power. At least, not that I know of. All right, I’m actually not sure; I have never asked. Do you?”

“Do I what now?”

“Do you know if you’ve done this before yourself? People miraculously changing their minds due to your influence, or perhaps having a change of heart because of something you said, something you wanted them to do?”

Crowley thought about it. “I...I thought they were just changing their minds, but it‘s happened more than once. In fact, every time. I thought I was lucky?”

“My dear angel, once or twice you would be lucky, but every time? Probabilistically unlikely. Miraculously unlikely, if that helps you understand it better.”

“Oh I didn’t…I didn’t mean to...” Crowley said in a very small voice. 

“It can’t be helped. We are what we are. And it is not like we can choose to be something else, just as the humans can only be themselves too, no matter what they’d like to be.”

“Oh.”

“Perhaps we could work on trying not to do it as much as possible. I suppose with practice, one could suppress that power until one has very little influence over humans. But it makes me think that this means all angels and demons have some sort of influence over living creatures in the world,” Aziraphale continued, “Though I suppose most of them don’t know about it, which is probably a very good thing for the humans. After all, imagine if those Dukes of Hell recognized what power they had over mortals. It’d be a catastrophe; they already have powers like being able to see into men’s hearts and such, they don’t need to know about additional powers of influencing men’s thoughts and actions.”

“Maybe it means we shouldn’t interfere as much with them,” Crowley said. “Because any time we are involved, free will goes out the door.”

“Perhaps. But I wonder how we’d go about that, what with our respective head offices constantly requiring us to interact with them.”

“I don’t know.” And then a curious whale swam over to inspect them with a huge gentle eye set in a scarred and cratered head, and Crowley forgot what he was talking about.


	24. Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Crowley asked but then was distracted by a school of fish swimming overhead, so large as to briefly blot out the fading light of day above the waters.

“Sure,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “I rather have some excellent idea as to where we’re going. I certainly hope it’s not too tiresome, it’s rather cold and dark where we’re headed.”

“Cold...and dark?”

“You’re not afraid of the cold or the dark, are you?”

“Just erm, how deep are we going?” Crowley said, trying to sound casual even as his anxiety shot up to the point of trembling hands.

“Rather deep. Don’t worry, your new powers will protect your corporeal body against the pressure.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m more worried about where we’re going.”

“Where do you think I’m taking you?” Aziraphale gave him a puzzled look.

“I uh, can’t go that far down, you know...I’m er, that is, we’re not allowed. Gabriel made that very clear...” Crowley’s voice failed him as he shakily pointed downwards. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale couldn’t help but laugh. “That look on your face was priceless. No, I assure you we are not visiting Hell. I promise. It’s just that the deeper the ocean, the darker it gets, and where we’re going is quite deep and thus, it’s quite dark. Think of it as if we were entering a primorodial forest in a valley, with massive trees thousands of years old. The ocean is something like that too. Though the forests here aren’t that long-lived nor are they forests, per se. I suppose stromatolites are even more long-lived than trees, though of course they don’t live in the deep...”

“And I suppose Leviathan is down there as well.” Crowley shivered, remembering the squashed model figures of himself and Aziraphale, broken wings sticking up sadly from beneath a monstrous appendage.

“Perhaps.” Aziraphale smiled. “Shall we go find out?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“Not really, no.”

“All right then. Great,” Crowley said weakly. “Let’s go.”

As they walked away from the daylit world, the ocean’s depth grew and light dimmed, becoming more and more distant. As night fell across the land, the dark began to feel almost unbearable; there was something comforting and reliable about the darkness of night, punctuated by the brilliant light of countless stars, but this was something else entirely. Even the moon when it came out lent little light, and Crowley had to adjust to this new sensation of darkness by adjusting his eyes, which oddly enough managed to work in the low light setting, though colors were even more faded in the darkness than they appeared normally. Even the water began to taste different; the closer to the surface, the water seemed saltier, but even the salinity seemed to change as they walked deeper into the depths.

Finally after some walking, Aziraphale stopped them before they could go any further; the ground beneath their feet had run out. Crowley peered over the edge; it seemed too steep to walk down, like looking down the edge of a gorge. Beyond was darkness and he shivered. This was absolutely not like the darkness of night, which held little to no fear for him, but the darkness of the unknown. Even through there were points of light in the inky blackness, they were strange to him and did not move with the calm regular rhythm of the stars, but with an organic and irregular chaos that made him uncomfortable.

“Well, we’ve made it to the edge of the continental shelf,” Aziraphale gestured grandly. “What lies beyond is darker, colder, and further from the light of the sun. Are you certain you want to go? I wouldn’t hold it against you, my dear, if this is the limit of your sense of adventure. After all, you go where angels fear to tread.”

“Positive. Though I don’t think it’s fear so much as reluctance to get wet,” Crowley said with a wry grin. “I’m not afraid. I know I can do this. And besides….I know that you wouldn’t give me over. After all, there is only one missing Prince of Hell to deal with and no matter how big Leviathan is or how dangerous, it would be a huge inconvenience to you if something happened to me and they replaced me with a higher ranked angel. I mean, do you really want to work with Sandalphon or Michael or Uriel?”

Aziraphale made a face that Crowley had never seen before; a mixture of irritation and disgust as if he had tasted and smelled something bad at the same time, and that combination had made him genuinely angry, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

“Certainly it would be...a non-trivial inconvenience to me, if you were discorporated,” Aziraphale said with a measured and careful tone, his expression one of forced calm. “After all, you’ve proved a...worthy foe.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Crowley said, and the smile that he gave Aziraphale made the Prince of Hell look away.

“Right, of course. Certainly. Ahem.” Aziraphale took a moment to straighten out his robes, even though they were underwater and there was not much that could be done to straighten them out beyond one’s own will as to how robes should look billowing underwater like the mantle of a large jellyfish. “We should go down now, together. Though of course it’s important to determine how-”

“I suppose walking is right out,” Crowley frowned, looking down. “Could we climb down? But if we fall, we’ll get discorporated. Shall we fly?”

“My dear, you forget that gravity has little power over you in the ocean. We could just step off and gently glide down without any use of wings. Just make sure to decide that you want to sink instead of float.”

The darkness seemed daunting and all the more dark now that clouds had obscured the distant moon above, and it made Crowley hesitate. 

“Oh, one thing. If you wouldn’t mind...well, that is.” Aziraphale cleared his throat, fussing at his robes for a moment before clearing his throat yet again. “Ahem. Uh, so we don’t get separated. Shall I offer you a hand?”

“Is...that wise?” Crowley’s hand twitched reflexively, as if remembering the demon’s firm, warm grip and the press of strong arms that wrapped all the way around him and-

“Well, I don’t know if it’s wise or not, but what I do know is that we, that is, you and I, and really all humans and so forth, are not monitored down here? Because there are no humans in the depths, it was decided quite a long time ago that there was no monitoring at all to be done. So no one watches the ocean beyond the surface and honestly if you really want to know I think that is where all the missing Princes of Hell and Archangels have faffed off to and...I’m talking too much aren’t I?”

“Yes. I mean, no, of course not, you’re a Prince of Hell, you can talk as much as you want...” Crowley gulped.

“Don’t. Here I’m just Aziraphale. And, if you’ll come with me, we can continue together.” Aziraphale offered Crowley his hand.

“Just so we’re not separated. As a matter of practicality.” Crowley reached out, his fingers grazing Aziraphale’s fingers and the slight touch made him sway; it was a good thing gravity was not an issue here because he was easily forgetting which joints held him up and which joints did nothing at all. For some time he had thought about that embrace, back on a sunny hillside and how long ago was that? Not so long that the memory had faded but then again, how could the memory ever fade?

Gently, Aziraphale’s hand closed around his, their fingers intertwined, and a tender emotion welled up in Crowley that he could not quite identify.

“Well then, let’s get a move on, shall we?” Aziraphale beamed, but his fingers twitched in Crowoley’s grip.

“Right.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Eh.” Crowley shrugged. “No reason not to. At least for this.”

“I suppose that’s good enough.” And then Aziraphale drew him close, an arm slung around Crowley’s waist and leapt forward into the darkness, gripping his hand tight.


	25. The Abyss

As they floated downward through the darkness Crowley’s eyes adjusted once more. Soon he could see the looming shadows of geological features: sea mounts and ravines, tall cliffs and distant mountain ranges. 

It was strange feeling the pressure around them increase as they went further down. The very water itself felt denser, saltier. It didn’t hurt Crowley in any way, but he could feel it and did not like it much; it was worse than the stifling feeling of a heavily humid day; it physically felt like what it felt like emotionally to be berated by his superiors. 

Then the water seemed to shift around them. It was a strange feeling that happened just for a moment, the time between one heartbeat and the next but then all that was forgotten or at least pushed aside as he looked about. Those little glimmers of eerie light that he had seen from afar were now all around them, and Crowley realized that these were merely animals of the deep, fish and other creatures that glowed in the darkness as a warning or a lure or a threat. Somehow it made him feel better than just seeing the grandeur of the stars; these were merely lives going about their existence, bringing tiny points of illumination to an ever-eternal night.

“Your pupils are huge,” Aziraphale said, as he watched the angel marvel at the sights around them, reaching out to a fanged and sharply finned deep underwater fish who swam up to them curiously before darting back into the darkness. “I suppose this must be the adaptation that they granted you with. Not terribly inventive.”

“Yours are...strangely shaped,” Crowley said, with a little frown. “Like...twisty ram’s horns or calligraphy. And strangely colored. Though I have noticed over the years that your eyes do tend to change color. Sometimes your skin too.”

“Camouflage, my dear. I suppose some things can’t be helped; I change with my surroundings. Is that all you’ve noticed about me?” Aziraphale teased. With a gentle thump, they landed on a deep abyssal plain. Both took a moment to straighten themselves out as a fine dust swirled up around them. 

“Wait, what were we talking about again?” Crowley blinked, after taking a moment to orient himself. “Oh. Erm.”

“I’m sure it was something about work,” Aziraphale said as he pointed them southward. Immediately they continued onward as small creatures moved out of their way, fish darting past their feet, strange spherical sponges waving their luminescent fronds at them as they passed. 

“Work, right. Of course. Always responsible and professional. Both of us. Um. So Aziraphale, tell me about Leviathan.”

“What do you want to know?” Aziraphale sounded amused.

“Well...whatever might help us find a missing Prince of Hell?”

“Hmm. Leviathan was always rather fond of the vast ocean, especially of the abyssal depths.”

“What does he look like?”

“I suppose ‘he’ is a reasonable word to use, but really like the rest of us, Leviathan is of no fixed gender and had no particular preference in the matter, at least when I knew Leviathan. Or shape either, after all appearance, shape, and size are all just preferences. And in the past Leviathan preferred being massive but I would not know what the current state of this missing Prince of Hell might be. Perhaps Leviathan is as big as an island, or perhaps Leviathan is merely floating around aimlessly, a tiny creature with far more evil lurking in a black heart than should be possible in such a small being.” 

“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” Crowley said. ‘I don’t know much more than the little I heard at the meeting and what you’re telling me now. How would I recognize a Prince of Hell in disguise? Do we greet every sea mount and sea creature until one speaks? Would he even speak to us?”

“Certainly I wouldn’t know. After all, we Princes of Hell are rather powerful in our own right. It’s been a long time since Leviathan went missing, almost since the creation of the Earth. It’s strange isn’t it? How even Archangels can go astray. Or at least, go missing. Early in those days of creation, seven Princes of Hell faced seven Archangels at every meeting. But since then, our numbers have dwindled.”

“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t high-ranked enough to meet even a Principality without an appointment booked decades in the future. No one’s ever said anything about any missing Archangels. I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to look at an Archangel much less talk to one if it wasn’t for being the Representative on Earth.”

“A secret, not to be revealed to the lower ranks of Heaven? But not one they can keep from their adversaries. We keep an eye on everything. No choice, really. Without an equal number of Archangels and Princes of Hell...well, the balance between could be tipped one way or the other.”

“Is that why they’re not all in the same place at once? Like the meeting.”

“Oh yes. One always stays out of the meeting case of treachery. The fiercest fighter, of course. Nothing is left to chance.”

“Treachery?” Crowley blinked. “But...that’s impossible? Unless, it’s your side that’s doing the treachery?”

Azirphale burst out into laughter. “My dear boy, do you really think that your side is incapable of breaking a truce? And that it is merely my side being difficult that makes it impossible to end the War in Heaven?”

“I thought we were supposed to be good,” Crowley said in a little voice.

“If you say it enough times, I suppose you can believe anything. Neither sides have clean hands, Crowley. Well, it’s a given for demons, but it’s still true for angels. Did you not pay attention during the meeting? Did you not hear the details of the projects? It matters little who gets hurt or sick or maimed, or how many are killed, as long as the accounting is done. And both sides certainly love the accounting.”

“Why is it so important? No one’s ever told me why it’s important, just that it has to be done and that we need to win as many souls as possible.”

“I believe it is the method by which the Almighty allows us to continue a proxy war against each side. We do it through the humans.”

Crowley gasped. “No!”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Think about the evidence. The stories they tell about Good versus Evil, the ‘good guys’ versus the ‘bad guys.’ When everything on Earth is of a complexity that defies the simplicity of Heaven and Hell.”

Crowley looked away, disheartened.

“Then again, I could be wrong. It’s just an opinion.” Aziraphale shrugged. “But the fact of the matter is, the more numbers of humans each side collects, the more successful that side is. Or so we’re told.”

“Where do they go, after they die? Human souls I mean, if we’re collecting them.”

“Certainly I’ve never seen a human soul in Hell. And I assume neither have you seen a human soul in Heaven.”

“No...I’ve never seen anything like...a collection of humans or their souls, no matter where in Heaven I go. But it is a big place, and I don’t think I’ve come anywhere to having seen the whole of it. Heaven that is.”

“Doubtful that they’re there. I’ve seen even the deepest pits of Hell, and there are no humans anywhere in Hell. Not a single, sprightly sinner. And yet millions are on our accounting rolls, just as millions are on yours.”

“Where are they then?”

“A realm beyond ours, I imagine. You could ask Death, but I don’t think he’d say.”

“No, I don’t think he would. After having met War...I don’t think any of them are like us anymore.” Crowley frowned.

“You know, Crowley, you’re rather...unusual,” Aziraphale said, with a considering manner. “I doubt that any one of us in management has ever met the Four. I certainly haven’t, and I’ve been to every important meeting since the Fall.”

“What are they? I know I’ve heard they were angels before...”

“They seem to occupy a middle place adjacent to Heaven and Hell and yet being of neither. Neither Fallen nor Celestial, not of Heaven nor Hell. But fully of the Earth.”

“Were they created for it? Or did they take angels and give them new jobs.”

“I can’t answer that,” Aziraphale said. “But I wonder if you were to ask Gabriel or Michael or any one of that lot if they have had dealings with the Four...I doubt they would say yes.” 

“So they’re a mystery. Like where humans go. Or...where the Almighty has g-” 

“Don’t,” Aziraphale said sternly. “Don’t say it. Some things we cannot ask about. You of all people should know. After all, asking too many is in very strong part what led to the fall.”

“Oh. Right.” Dejected, Crowley shut his mouth. They walked in silence for what felt like a long time, and Crowley wondered why he hadn’t fallen; hadn’t he always asked questions? Or perhaps those questions had always been innocuous. 

Until he came to Earth, until he had met Aziraphale, perhaps that was when the questions he had started to take on a tinge of disloyalty. And was that infernal influence? Or merely an awakening? Because it seemed to Crowley that he had always had these questions inside of him, he just didn’t know how to put them in words.

Crowley turned to look at Aziraphale, wondering what kind of question it was that Aziraphale had asked that had gotten him banished from Heaven like the other demons. But then he noticed that Aziraphale seemed to appear somewhat clearer, and he could see the luminous blue of Aziraphale’s eyes, eyes that took on any shade they preferred but often looked like the color of the clearest bodies of water and just as variable.

“Erm, just...wondering is it just me or is it? Er, getting brighter?”

“So it would seem.” 

“And the salinity is changing too, I can taste it.”

“Perhaps?” Aziraphale seemed unphased.

“Oh. And the pressure too seems...lighter and- oh, it’s gone.” And just as he said that, Crowley walked into what appeared to be a meadow. 

It was night here too, but the stars glittered in the sky, as numerous and countably uncountable as they always were. The moon was obscured behind a veil of clouds, and in the distance was a house upon a hill.


	26. The House Upon a Hill

Crowley stared at the ground. There was grass, and a breeze that ruffled the long grass brought with it the scent of earth and dew and spring flowers.

“This...is odd.” Crowley looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. It seemed to go against everything he knew about what it meant to be underwater, not that he knew that much. Did water work this way? Did it ever? Was it always like this?

“So it seems,” Aziraphale gave Crowley’s hand a squeeze. “Hungry? Would you like some supper?”

“Uh, sure?”

They walked up to the house, a simple structure of rectangular slabs that reminded him of those first cities that humans built ages ago, though it was made of sandstone and not mud brick. 

“Please, do come in,” Aziraphale gestured courteously and Crowley stepped in, curious. The moment he stepped inside, the interior lit up with light from oil lamps made of sea shells that were scattered here and there throughout the room, sitting atop wooden papyrus boxes that lined the room, dozens of them, in some places stacked to the ceiling.

The walls were hung with elegant cotton hangings from the Indus Valley that lent a vibrant splash of color to the place, yet there was little in the way of furniture. The little house reminded him of those homes that people had before they started making chairs and tables and elaborate decorations like big bronze candelabra or fancy supper couches. What was there was an eclectic mix of pieces from all over the world, and he thought that these all seemed like things that Aziraphale would have picked up over the years to suit his fancy. There was a well-brushed but coarse mammoth hide draped over some large cotton-stuffed pillows, the whole pile of which had been set on an intricately patterned woven mat that covered the floor for seating. Scattered around the room were beautifully handwoven baskets filled with fruit or flowers that looked so fresh they seemed to have just been picked. When Crowley looked more closely, the fruit and flowers were made of silk and paper, but dyed and painted to look real.

Despite the minor chaos of the place, it was cosy and inviting. 

“Where are we?”

“It’s my place. Well, one of my places, not the most splendid one if you must know, just an ordinary place. I do have fine palaces elsewhere on Earth, if you recall. But I suppose you could think of this one as a vacation house. Apologies, I haven’t been here in a while and haven’t updated it much since I was here last. It’s rather simple. I think I should like to do some redecorating at some point.” 

“I like it. Reminds me of days past. It’s lovely,” Crowley smiled, and flustered, Aziraphale turned away before clapping his hands together in a moment of epiphany.

“Oh, pardon me, I do need to be a better host. So sorry, my dear, I don’t have very much practice in having company. I rarely have anyone over, by which I mean I never really have anyone over, at least not here. Shall I wash your feet? Or pour some water for your hands?”

“No, no. It’s fine,” Crowley said. “We were just in the water after all, weren’t we? I think I’ve had enough water for now. Not that water or dust or dirt sticks to us.”

“Oh. Good point. Those are all just human niceties, aren’t they? Though I have to say I do find them to be pleasing little customs. Let me get the fire going. I do very much like having a fire, no matter the circumstances. It just makes the room so much cosier.”

Aziraphale came to the hearth at the center of the room and began to fuss with kindling and wood, and Crowley wandered around the large room once to look at all the different shaped shell lamps. As he wandered, he realized there were rooms that branched out from this one, hidden behind panels of draperies. But those other rooms were dark and Crowley did not think it proper to call for some miraculous light to go snooping around Aziraphale’s house without permission, so he returned to the hearth, sitting down on a smooth-woven straw mat that was surprisingly softer than it appeared; it had been made of woven rushes and hemp, was thickly padded. The stone floor had been tiled with jointed wood, of such simple construction that made him wonder if Aziraphale had put the wooden floor in himself. It was nice in here without the arid coldness of Heaven and without the unpleasant damp chill of Hell, or so he had heard Aziraphale mention it before. Here, it was as pleasantly warm as an ideal spring evening in Thebes. 

“I’m sorry, I hope it’s not too dry in here for you. I keep it that way for my books; they really don’t do well in the damp.”

“Aren’t we...at the bottom of the ocean?”

“Oh yes. It’s a rather splendid place to keep my things,” Aziraphale said. “I mean, the things I really like. Though I don’t get to visit quite as often as I like. 

“But what about Leviathan?”

“What about Leviathan?” Aziraphale shrugged. “Leviathan can wait. But a nice hot cup of tea or some wine? And oh yes, supper? What would you like?”

“There isn’t really much to eat at the bottom of the sea? I mean, unless you’re a fish...”

“My dear boy, down here we can have whatever we like. I have ways of getting what I want.”

“But won’t Hell notice?”

Aziraphale chuckled, a wicked and sinful sound. “The day Hell starts tracking, itemizing, and reconciling the expenditures of any Prince of Hell will be a very cold day indeed, as they say. Though I suppose that is something of a danger for us and I suppose it must be the same for Archangels, the fact that we can utilise powers at our disposal, and what a large amount of power that is. To be honest, I use very little for myself, though I do like to spend some of it occasionally on a place like this. Oh, and speaking of this place, if you want to leave, you shouldn’t go on your own. Likely to be discorporated from the change in pressure and environment, the moment you step out. So just say the word and we’ll go together, but for now, I do hope you’ll enjoy my hospitality.” 

“Ghk,” Crowley said, reasonably.

Aziraphale hummed to himself cheerfully as he cooked, focused as all eight arms chopped and seasoned; ground spices with a ceramic mortar and pestle; mixed flour and water; and added more fuel to the hearth fire. Crowley watched, and even though he wanted to be briefly lost in the wonder of it, guilt gnawed at him and instead he thought about his responsibilities. Being down here in Aziraphale’s house, was this supposed to be part of work? And if so, shouldn’t he be thwarting the demon? He felt a stirring of guilt that he was doing nothing but watching; Heaven had invested him with extra powers and he had better be responsible and do his duty. 

So when Aziraphale reached for the pepper, he slid the pot of cumin seeds toward a questing hand. And as Aziraphale went to reach for the fennel, Crowley handed him the coriander. It wasn’t much, Crowley thought, but it would technically count as thwarting?

“I don’t suppose you have much experience cooking,” Aziraphale finally said, exasperated, when he was given a container of sesame seeds instead of the rendered fat from a fat-tailed sheep. “Because none of these things look anything alike, particularly since this is from a plant and not an animal.”

“Oh.” And Crowley didn’t know what to do; he had never been caught out in a thwarting before.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean...I don’t know.” Crowley threw his hands over his face and collapsed onto the mat. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“Do what?”

“Nothing.” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale sorted through his hands until he found one that was clean, and reached out to pat Crowley’s shoulder. 

“Try to relax, my dear. I know it’s hard and you’re not accustomed to it, having never had one. But everyone needs a vacation now and then, even celestial beings.”

“Yeah. I’ll try,” Crowley mumbled, red from embarrassment.


	27. The Arrangement

“Shall we eat outside?” Aziraphale asked, once everything was done and ready for eating.

“Sure.”

Crowley carried smooth-polished wooden bowls and some big cotton-stuffed pillows while Aziraphale brought the rest with an assortment of arms, lugging with him ceramic pots full of hot food, a woven basket filled with hot flat bread, an amphora of wine and cups to drink it from as well, even a lamp for light to dine by. It was a wonder he could manage to walk, and to be honest Crowley wasn’t even sure how Aziraphale was walking. Whatever was happening was certainly forward progress but legs didn’t seem like they were involved

“Seems...like a lot of arms. Lots of hands,” Crowley muttered.

“Call it laziness,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “I didn’t want to make more than one trip. Where shall we sit?” 

“Let’s set up on that hill over there, just beyond the tree.”

Under the starry skies of the strange world beneath the sea, Crowley set down the things he carried and helped Aziraphale serve their meal.

Supper was generous and perfectly cooked, an intricately spiced stew of lamb, chickpeas, and lentils that they ate with rice and a simple flat bread, all of which Aziraphale had cooked on the hearth. Afterward, pleasantly full, they reclined on pillows as though the ground itself were their supper couches, generous cups of wine by their sides.

“Aziraphale, can I ask you a question?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale looked up at Crowley mid-sip, before setting the wine cup down. He licked his lips. “Of course, my dear.”

“Is.” And Crowley blinked, seeing the little pink tip of Aziraphale’s tongue. He quickly looked away, staring down at his wine cup though it gave him no answers. “Erm. Uh. Ahem. That is...uh. So…so is the sky real? I mean, down here. That can’t really be the sky?”

“No, it’s not. It’s merely a simulacrum. Meant to represent what the real thing looks like above us, but not it exactly.” 

“So does that mean the sky here imitate day too?”

“Yes, soon enough the sun will come up, and it’ll be day. But that’s not what you want to ask.”

“No. Er.” Crowley sighed. “You’re right. Sorry. Sorry, this has been lovely, really quite wonderful but I...”

Aziraphale waited patiently for Crowley.

Crowley huffed a sigh. “I’m wondering if it’s okay.”

“You mean if it’s allowed?” Aziraphale shrugged. “Why would that matter?” But then seeing Crowley’s aggrieved look, Aziraphale sighed. “Well, I suppose it would be scandalous in the eyes of Heaven and Hell, if they were watching. But believe me, they’re not.”

“Yeah, but what if-”

“They won’t catch us. After all, if anyone would have caught onto me doing this in the past, it would have been Beelzebub, and nothing like that has ever happened.”

“Oh.” Crowley huffed a sigh of relief. “Oh, you’re right. But why...”

“So if you must know, every now and then I say to Hell that I will set off on a journey to search for Leviathan, and I instead come here and pretend that there is nothing in the world but my books and myself until it grows too dull. Since I’m still on Earth, it doesn’t change the circumstances for you; I wouldn’t do anything that would make you have to wait in Heaven without me. For a long time I wanted to bring you here, but there was no way that it could have been done.”

“No, not without additional powers and such,” Crowley agreed.

“But!” Aziraphale continued. “For some reason, this time Beezlebub was insistent that I succeed and take as long as necessary. Then I suppose someone in Heaven must have caught wind of it, and well, then they got you involved. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more direct about the details ahead of time, but you are an honest angel and I would not want to burden you with the guilt of secrets.”

“Oh. I...I guess that’s why sometimes I didn’t see you for a long time.”

“Yes. And now that I think of it, I should also apologize for not asking your permission.”

“My permission?”

“I should have asked if you wanted to come here,” Aziraphale sighed. “Though I suppose I got carried away in all this and never thought to ask.”

“Oh.” Crowley blinked, not realizing what that meant and not having the right words to say it. But as he thought, or more to the point, _felt_ , he realized that often human beings asked each other their preferences and Aziraphale did too, for the most part, on things like food or drink, and...suddenly he was overcome with a sharp pang of emotion, realizing that there were few conditions under which anyone besides Aziraphale had asked him what he wanted to do. In fact, no one other than humans or Aziraphale had ever asked his permission or even his preference. Heaven issued orders, he followed those orders, and even the occasional heavily veiled complaint changed nothing. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, genuinely contrite. “I hope...this is all right.”

“I uh, I don’t know? But I think...that I might be more than all right. In fact,” Crowley dropped his voice to a whisper. “I might be enjoying this.”

Aziraphale let out a sigh of relief tinted with a hint of smile but a moment later he scowled to himself. “I know that perhaps I am apologizing a lot, so please, I apologize for apologizing so much. But I did want to say that I’m also sorry I didn’t bring you with me earlier. I think we could have made some good memories here together.”

“You sound like…” And Crowley remembered Asmodeus’ warning, and the words stuck in his throat.

“Hmm?”

“You sound like you’re saying goodbye.” Crowley felt his voice nearly disappear, as if he could not say those things out loud for fear of making them true.

“Well.” Aziraphale straightened his robes, adjusting the gentle drape of fabric around himself, using the motion to buy himself some time to think. “There...there is the off-chance that I will be recalled. Growing complexity on Earth means that administrative affairs in Hell require more management, and Beelzebub has been making noises that I would be better suited in a desk job. As Asmodeus is utterly unsuitable for such work.”

“Oh.” And Crowley curled up tight on himself, trying to imagine what it would be like for the rest of time to never see Aziraphale again.

“Whatever happens, we’ll have time here together. As long as we like,” Aziraphale said with wry, sad expression, and Crowley felt something heat up inside of himself.

“Can’t we...can’t we just run away? For good. You said Princes of Hell and Archangels did it all the time in the past. Why can’t we just stay down here or maybe even fly off into space? I know they don’t have observation stations out there the way they do on Earth. It’s a big universe. Can’t we just do that?”

Aziraphale’s smile turned brittle, as if pained.

“Oh, my dear boy. You know I would run away with you in a heartbeat if I could.” His voice was gentle, and Crowley felt a pang of pain cut through him; he knew the answer had to be no even as he had asked. “But it would upset the Balance and immediately cause the continuation of the war between Heaven and Hell. Four Archangels against three Princes of Hell, and we know what the outcome to that would be. As much as I...whatever I feel about Heaven, I cannot let the world be destroyed in the ensuing war.”

“Do you think they would destroy it?”

“I think if it had been permissible to destroy the Earth, they would have done it a long time ago. Earth is...troublesome. It changes us – no, worse. It forces us to change. Even Hell is not the same as it was in the past. The boiling lakes of sulphur in a vast cavernous space are no more; the heat of it has cooled and dissipated, and instead of pits we’re left looking like those very early cities mixed with the labyrinth of Minos, a hodgepodge of palaces and mud brick buildings and wattle-daub houses and subterranean store rooms, all cold and damp as if a perpetual winter with no sign of spring. But even that is changing again; there are marble columns now, and agoras and stoas and theatres springing up. You can’t even really say that there are deep pits in Hell either; nowadays they’re more like sub-basements. Very unpleasant ones, mind, but no longer dark open holes in the cavernous deep.”

“Oh. That answered my question.” Crowley blinked. “Which is to say, while I was waiting to be called into the meeting, I couldn’t help but notice how much Heaven had changed and I had wondered if Hell did too.”

“Both places have seen so much change. I would wager that most of our respective sides would do whatever it would take to stop these dynamic processes; as you can imagine, change is unsettling for those of us who do not deal much with Earth. You and I have grown accustomed to it, or as accustomed as we can be, but so many angels fallen or otherwise cannot accept that circumstances constantly are in flux. Sometimes I think that the hope in the Great Plan is the hope that we can stop this process of change and go back to eternal stability.”

“Wait. If we were to have eternal stability again throughout the entire universe...wouldn’t that mean all life would have to end? Wouldn’t that...destroy the Earth?”

“Oh yes and quite spectacularly, I should think. The planet may remain, but what lives on it would be gone, scoured from its surface.”

“I hadn’t thought of the Great Plan like this before.” Crowley muttered to himself.

“It’s not your fault, Crowley. I don’t think that anyone knows the details besides upper management, though I think hints of it have been sneaking out for ages. But what it really means to be destroyed in fire isn’t as comprehensible until you imagine the generations upon generations of striving, of surviving and trying, all utterly annihilated. That is what it really means, not just the spark of a flame and then poof, it’s all done, leaving nothing left behind but cleansing smoke.” 

“Oh.” Crowley had not thought about that before, what it would mean for humans who had for generations been born, lived, and died. Destruction would mean the disappearance of all their languages, their ideas, their memories, their music, their art. The songs they sung to their children, the stories they told over their fires at night, their jokes as they worked in the day, their prayers as they huddled together at night. All of it gone, and with no one to remember them by, except for celestial beings who cared little about the material things that humans represented.

“We were told that it was for good,” Crowley said to himself in a small voice. 

“Goodness in Heaven’s eyes are not necessarily what would be best for those poor humans who are just trying to live their lives as best they can.”

And Crowley didn’t want to believe it, didn’t think that this was the ultimate outcome, but here he was, confronted by the reality; there could be no change in eternal stasis, the kind that existed before the Creation, and thus no sentient things beyond celestial ones could be allowed to be a part of that. Yet by definition life was dynamic, ever-changing. It could not be otherwise.

“We can’t let it happen, can we?”

“No, we can’t.”

Crowley sighed, sinking his thoughts and also his face into the yielding embrace of the cotton-stuffed pillow, enjoying the feeling of the finely woven fabric. There was that infernal Balance that had to be kept, and four Archangels had to stand against an equal number of Princes of Hell to-

“Wait a minute,” Crowley sat up. “Okay, so we agree on preserving the world as best we can. You can’t run away because of the balance of powers.”

“Yes? Your point being?”

“Well, if we could find Leviathan and convince him to return, wouldn’t that upset the balance?”

Aziraphale gave Crowley a look. 

“But we could preserve the balance anyway, because if Leviathan could be found and convinced to return, perhaps someone else could step down as a Prince of Hell...”

“Like a runaway swap? Are you suggesting that I run away?” Aziraphale blinked.

“Only under these particular conditions? I’m not saying it’s possible. But perhaps...”

“And what stance would you take in that situation?”

“The one of a fellow runaway,” Crowley said bravely, chin up.


	28. The Plan

Aziraphale turned pale. “It’s one thing for me to leave. My rank entitles me to certain capabilities that protect me. But you...you’re just an ordinary angel.”

“So?”

Aziraphale reached out, his hand cupping Crowley’s jaw so that their eyes met, careful not to touch the cold black ring that was his infernal crown to Crowley’s skin. “My dear, the worst they can do to me is confine me to Hell, and not even for a long time. Sooner or later I’d have to be trotted out again for a meeting or to sit with the other Lords of Hell in the Dark Council. They can’t afford to lose my allegiance to Hell, not if they want any chance of triumphing over the Opposition. But if you’re caught rebelling, you would be destroyed out of hand.”

“They don’t do that to angels,” Crowley said confidently, even as he felt his skin shiver at Aziraphale’s touch.

“That you know of,” Aziraphale said, gently stroking Crowley’s cheek with his thumb, feeling the angel calm at his touch. “We have been invited more than once to an execution. They need one of us there for it.”

“Why?” Crowley’s brow furrowed, puzzled.

“They burn the offender away with hellfire. It might as well have been that the being destroyed never existed, as everything of them is burned away.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Crowley shivered, and it was a cold that went straight through his bones. Aziraphale gestured with his free hand, and a moment later a warmed striped wool blanket draped gently around Crowley’s shoulders. Crowley pulled it close around himself, listening.

“It’s rather horrible. I haven’t seen it myself, but my Duke has been asked to Heaven before to...do the dirty work. Legion is rather fond of it. Has a taste for angels.”

Crowley blinked, afraid to ask what that meant. Closed in with thoughts that seemed to race through his head, at a pace too quick to rein in he glanced at Aziraphale, who looked particularly cold and pale in the moonlight, and when Aziraphale turned, Crowley saw that Prince of Hell’s face obscured by shadow, his expression unreadable. 

And then he realized there was something else he wanted to ask. 

“What about falling?” Crowley could feel himself shaking, and he turned his head, pulling away from Aziraphale’s touch, only to immediately regret it.

His hand twitched, and inched closer to Aziraphale’s other hand which rested on the blanket beside him.

Aziraphale smiled but it was a sad, wistful expression. “Believe me, I would love for you to serve me as a retainer in Hell. Truly I would. If I were to be honest, I have thought of it more than once, and more than in passing. But it would not suit you, my dear. You would be miserable in the dark and damp, with no music or birdsong or naps. You’re a creature of light, unsuited for the darkness below, and I would not do that to you. Besides, think of this; has anyone fallen since those days long ago?”

“Oh. No, not at all,” Crowley said, and he could see where this was going.

“It was a choice of the Almighty’s, and one that we cannot question.” Aziraphale’s lips tightened momentarily before he lost the thread of that old pain, as a slim and hesitant hand pressed against his. He closed his fingers upon it, feeling delicate fingers entangled with his own. “What was I saying again?”

“I don’t remember,” Crowley sighed, drawing Aziraphale’s hand close, pressing it against his cheek, eyes half-closed. “Oh wait, falling.”

“It won’t happen, no matter how hard any of us try. Just as there is no redemption for us, there is no degradation either. We are what we are for our existences, without forgiveness or mercy. But we can still look for Leviathan. It’s a mad thought, but it might worth be trying.”

“I’ve come up with a plan,” Aziraphale said brightly. 

“Hmm?” Crowley startled awake, surprised that he had fallen asleep somehow. A faint dawn light had suffused the little artificial world around them in a delicately pink glow, and when he looked up at Aziraphale, it seemed that Aziraphale glowed with light as well, his curling flaxen hair like a halo about his head. “Oh, a plan? I have a plan too.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“You first,” Crowley said politely, deferring to the Prince of Hell.

“All right.” Aziraphale clapped his hands together. “We’ll search for Leviathan together, and convince him to take responsibility. I may be more powerful, but you have rather fine senses for these things. I think it would work!”

“Oh.” Crowley nodded. “I...had a different idea. Just a little bit different.” He sat up, straightening his robes around him.

“Oh?”

“The search part would be the same, that part we agree on. But what if. Erm.” Crowley stared at the grass, as though it could help him. Traitorously, it didn’t. “What if we just did that every other day?” Crowley suggested. “And the rest of the time we could spend here. I mean, if it’s all right with you.”

“Uh.” Aziraphale looked flustered; “That is, I-I...uh you do know that don’t have much of a research library, so I don’t know if the books would be of any help seeing as how most of them are just for my own amusement but perhaps I could see about getting some more texts that might help us in our-”

“I mean, here. With you.”

“Do-doing what?”

“Er, you know. Whatever we want to do. But in the same place? Just...being together?”

Aziraphale’s mouth fell slack for a moment before he remembered himself, and then the expression on his face ran through an entire narrative in five acts, from confusion to disbelief to dawning revelation to excitement to flustered distraction. 

“Why, I...that is, uh.”

“So if it’s all right, tomorrow we should stay here too, and then start the day after. What do you think?”

Flustered, Aziraphale stumbled through a series of unconnected syllables before closing his mouth. Then he tried again. Crowley waited patiently as Aziraphale got his mouth under control, but there was the barest hint of a smile on his own lips that he tried very hard to hide as he watched Aziraphale stutter.

“My apologies,” Aziraphale said finally, before speaking very slowly and deliberately, as if he could by sheer force control the actions of his rebellious lips. “It uh, appears. That the connection between my mind and my mouth...uh, briefly failed. Strange things, bodies, aren’t they? Ahem.” The Prince of Hell spent a long considered moment tugging and adjusting his robes as if they were not already draped perfectly about himself. 

“Yeah...bodies. Wonky business. So? What do you think of the plan?”

“It seems quite rebellious. Heaven and Hell would be furious if they found out.”

“So? You said they wouldn’t find out.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” Aziraphale closed his eyes for a moment, the expression on his face looking pained.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Crowley muttered.

“No. Oh, no...no no no no no…!” Aziraphale waved his hands in a frantic gesture of negation. “No, it’s absolutely not a bad idea. It’s just...”

“Hmm?”

“Just...” Aziraphale’s arms were thrown up in a gesture of frustration. “I am very sorry, but I don’t know what to do with myself because this is working out to be what I want, even if I didn’t know that was what I wanted.” There was a tiny note of misery in Aziraphale’s voice that made Crowley pause.

“I...don’t understand.”

“I think that I didn’t think it would work out like this.”

“How did you think it would have worked out?”

“Not quite exactly like this but something like this. But...it seemed too optimistic to hope for anything so wonderful. Like a pleasant dream that I could never quite have. And now…I think having what I had dreamed about is giving me something of a crisis.”

“Oh.” Crowley thought about it. Did Aziraphale often get what he wanted? Which then made him realize that he did not often get what he wanted, not because anyone was actively thwarting him or preventing him, but because he literally did not know what he wanted. Because usually he was just told what was to be done, and he did as he was commanded. “I think I understand.”

“Perhaps in this way we are not too dissimilar,” Aziraphale said, and at those words Crowley knew that Aziraphale was setting cool, logical words between them like laying out a protective wall of precise and accurate vocabulary that could be used to protect himself.

“You know what I think? I think that maybe for this first round...we should maybe stay here for a few days or more and not worry about work. And then...we can try working every other day. When we get bored of vacation.”

Aziraphale turned several interesting colors, some of them not even meant to be made by humans.

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed notes to follow upon completion. 
> 
> Also may I offer you some more ancient history adventures in these trying times? Check out my other series, [Mistakes Were Made](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1432507). 
> 
> Or if you want, you can have some amusing fluff, as a treat: [The First (and Last) Night of the Rest of Their Lives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746385/chapters/46737064).


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